(Not Yet) Music Week

Blog link.

The 19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll Begins

Blog link.

Daily Log

Back on [11-12], I posted this to Facebook:

I thought I'd mention here that I just updated my Speaking of Which from Monday, which covers the fallout of Tuesday's election, as well as other atrocities. I've been doing these weekly posts for many years now, but this is my biggest one ever, and I think has a lot of interesting reports and thoughts. I've also decided it will be my last one, lest it become an all-consuming black hole. Music Week will continue (at least to 2025), and I have other projects I've been meaning to get to. So I'll be OK. Not so sure about you, but what I've been doing doesn't seem to have been helping much.

I did get a couple of nice comments:

• Rannfrid Thelle: I've only just started reading this, Tom, it is so good! I have a tab open so I can keep coming back to it.

• Greg Morton: I intentionally want to make this public, so here I go. I think you should electronically bind all of your Speaking of Which into a single e-book and send it, without having even been asked, to the university Political Science department of your choice (or departmentS, plural) so that it/they can be used by future students who research this era. What you have captured is so big, and so historically important (I want to say crucial) that it needs to be saved. You will probably say that you were just one person, one voice, so why would your opinions matter to future scholars, but please know that you spoke loudly and passionately for many of us and we need to have those words remembered. Thanks.

• Iris Demento: Tom Hull's is one of the best analyses I've seen and is helping me focus.

I also got mail through the Q&A form, that related to the post:

• Gary Finney: [] It is with great sadness that I read your dismay with the state of politics in this country. You are not alone. Individual people can exhibit behavior so irrational that they are deemed insane. Collectively, this country seems to have gone insane.

  I have enjoyed reading your astute, erudite observations on political science/social justice issues via Speaking Of Which and will miss your weekly posts, should you indeed bring things to a halt.

  I feel that we're we to live in the same city, we'd probably be friends. Our paths as rock 'n rollers who veered into a jazz direction is a commonality, as is our interest in politics. Being four years your junior, I too have been indelibly shaped by the sixties.

  So, thank you for all of your posts. You are a beacon of hope in a world whose prospects seem to get dimmer by the day. I look forward to participating, once again, in the Francis Davis poll.

• Ziggy Schouws: [11-15] I hope I misread your doubts about continuing Speaking if Which, for me it's the ideal start of the week, to have an overview of all the important topics in one click (and to realize that things can always be worse . . . ).

Getting reports back from Dr. Tibbe.

Daily Log

Went to see doctor today. Was overdue for checkup, so they did mucho lab work, but immediarte issue was knee abrasion from fall a few days back. Didn't seem to be healing, so they recommended antibacterial cream, with a course of antibiotics if that fails. Will find out about tests later. Meanwhile, I filed this tweet:

Went to Dr. office today, and had to answer standard mental health assessments: Q: have you been depressed lately; A: only since election. Second Q on inactivity, same answer. Nurse wrote down NO to both, without tipping her own hand. Hard to be insane when world is.

Later in the day, regarding Huckabee's appointment as Ambassador to Israel, I tweeted:

No sooner than we vote against World War III, and Trump appoints America's first-ever Ambassador to Armageddon. Talk about bait and switch!

Daily Log

With Speaking of Which canned, the obvious option is to save things that I want to save in the Notebook, which means more and more frequent Daily Logs.

This is from Michael Tatum, in Facebook: [11-07]

The smug complacency of the Democrats thought there was portent in this and so many other Trump moments from the last few months, where Trump insulted Detroit in a city thirty miles away, to one of his dwindling crowds. No way they could have voted for that unhinged weirdo loser, right?

Wrong. What Democrats don't understand is that Trump's biggest demographic -- middle-aged "Christian" males without a college education -- would have voted for him no matter what. They share his resentments -- toward immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, and most of all, women.

This is a truly sad day for America. In the next four years, rich will get their spoils, everyone else the crumbs, which is always the Republican's game plan. Has been for decades. Women's rights will continue to be curtailed, as will those of the LGBTQ. Our policies toward immigrants (at least, the ones from countries that aren't Norway) will become even crueler.

I have no idea what is in store for this country, but if Project 2025 is any indication, even if they enact half of that garbage into law we're headed toward fascism. Which I'm beginning to think is attractive to a lot of people -- until they realize their rights, or those of someone they care about, will be stripped away, too.

As for myself, I think I will renew my Planned Parenthood membership, maybe support an LGBTQ association in a vulnerable community. Neither of those issues directly affect me, but that's the point of life isn't it? Reaching out to those who need your help, even if you don't directly benefit from it?

Lastly, to all those conservatives who go on about "peace and love," a phrase that has been co-opted by a lot of hateful, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic people who are everything but peaceful or loving to people that are "different" from them. Read a book -- a real one. You might learn why people like me are horrified by a large portion of this country.

Facebook post by Sal Boca, who learned a bit about Georgian food while reporting on their election:

Thank you for the kind birthday wishes everyone. I just got back from a reporting trip to the country Georgia so I made a Georgian Supra (feast) for my family and close friends. We drank a lot of toasts of Georgian wine, so many we forgot to take a picture.

Everything is family style at a supra, with all of the side/veg dishes served room temp or cold and on the table at all times. This included eggplant and peppers, cooked and raw salad (one dish with both ingredients), various pickles, beets in sour plum sauce, roasted pumpkin, and the national side dish of cucumber, tomato, and onion in a zesty walnut garlic sauce.

And fresh bread hot from the oven of course. The bread culture in Georgia is the best in the world. I'll fight any German or Frenchman on the block over this.

These are sampled at will between the hot meat courses, starting with a beef and tomato stew called chashashuli, a sausage and lamb meatball course served with a cold yogurt sauce, and duck breast in blackberry sauce.

After all that no one had room for khachapuri or khinkali so we saved those for a later date.

The election didn't exactly turn out like we had hoped but that wasn't too much of a surprise. We have the next four years to deal with that.

What's not going to change is my commitment to my people and celebrating our lives every single day. The bullshit narcissists who 'run' our country have never valued the people or things that are most important to me. I do not look to them for guidance or acceptance. I'm going to resist this dumbass just like the last one and the one before that.

One way to do that, my favorite way, is to make sure we all have a place where we can value each other in the private, personal ways that actually matter. If you didn't make it to the supra this year just know you're already invited to the next one.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, November archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 35 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 43153 [43118] rated (+35), 26 [36] unrated (-10).

New records reviewed this week:

• Ashtyn Barbaree: Sent Through the Ceiling (2024, Artists 3 60): [cd]: B+(***)
• Big Bambi: Compositions for Bass Guitar & Bassoon, Vol. I (2022 [2024], Greene Avenue Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Steve Coleman and Five Elements: PolyTropos/Of Many Turns (2024, Pi): [cd]: A-
• Caleb Wheeler Curtis: The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery (2024, Imani, 2CD): [cd]: A-
• Andy Haas: For the Time, Being (2024, Resonant Music): [cd]: B+(*)
• Laird Jackson: Life (2024, self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
• Ariel Kalma/Jeremiah Chiu/Marta Sofia Honer: The Closest Thing to Silence (2022-23 [2024], International Anthem): [sp]: B+(**)
• Pandelis Karayorgis/George Kokkinaris: Out From Athens (2023 [2024], Driff): [bc]: B+(**)
• Rebecca Kilgore: A Little Taste: A Tribute to Dave Frishberg (2023 [2024], Cherry Pie Music)
• Lady Gaga: Harlequin (2024, Interscope): [sp]: B+(*)
• Brian Lynch: 7X7BY7 (2021 [2024], Holistic MusicWorks): [cd]: B+(***)
• Lyrics Born: Goodbye, Sticky Rice (2024, Mobile Home): [sp]: A-
• JD McPherson: Nite Owls (2024, New West): [sp]: B+(**)
• Willie Nelson: Last Leaf on the Tree (2024, Legacy): [sp]: B+(**)
• Outer Spaceways Incorporated: Kronos Quartet & Friends Meet Sun Ra (2024, Red Hot +): [sp]: B+(**)
• Cene Resnik/Samo Salamon/Samuel Ber: The Thinkers (Samo): [bc]: B++(***)
• Kevin Sun: Quartets (2022-23 [2024], Endectomorph Music, 2CD): [cd]: B+(***)
• Western Jazz Collective: The Music of Andrew Rathbun (2021 [2024], Origin): [cd]: B+(**)
• Tucker Zimmerman: Dance of Love (2024, 4AD): [sp]: A-

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Black Artist Group: For Peace and Liberty: In Paris, Dec 1972 (1972 [2024], WeWantSounds): [sp]: B+(***)

Old music:

• Steve Coleman Group: Motherland Pulse (1985, JMT): [yt]: B+(***)
• Steve Coleman and Five Elements: The Sonic Language of Myth: Believing, Learning, Knowing (1999, RCA Victor): [yt]: B+(***)
• Steve Coleman and Five Elements: Drop Kick (1992, RCA/Novus): [sp]: B+(*)
• Steve Coleman and the Mystic Rhythm Society: Myths, Modes and Means (1995, Groovetown/RCA/BMG France): [sp]: B+(**)
• Steve Coleman and Metrics: The Way of the Cipher (1995, Groovetown/RCA/BMG France): [sp]: B+(**)
• Steve Coleman: Invisible Paths: First Scattering (2007, Tzadik): [sp]: B+(*)
• Rebecca Kilgore and Dave Frishberg: Not a Care in the World (1995, Arbors): [sp]: B+(**)
• Rebecca Kilgore & Dave Frishberg: The Starlit Hour (1997 [2001], Arbors): [r]: B+(***)
• Rebecca Kilgore: Moments Like This (1998-99 [2001], HeavyWood Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Rebecca Kilgore and the Bobby Gordon Trio: Make Someone Happy: A Further Remembrance of Maxine Sullivan, Volume Two (2004 [2005], Audiophile): [sp]: A-
• Rebecca Kilgore: Rebecca Kilgore's Lovefest at the Pizzarelli Party (2010, Arbors): [r]: B+(**)
• Rebecca Kilgore: With Hal Smith's Rhythmakers (2015, Audiophile): [r]: B+(*)
• Rebecca Kilgore With Hal Smith's Rhythmakers: Sings the Music of Fats Waller (2016, Audiophile): [sp]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Michaël Attias: Quartet Music Vol. I: LuMiSong (Out of Your Head) [03-01]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

Draft file opened 2024-11-06 2:00 PM.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, November archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 19 albums, 3 A-list

Music: Current count 43118 [43099] rated (+19), 36 [41] unrated (-5).

We got to the polls later than I expected, so I had some time early today to fiddle with, and I used it to add more links to yesterday's Speaking of Which (up to 159, from 135). Vox emailed me a couple election anxiety/guide articles, so I figured it wouldn't hurt to cite them. I sometimes imagine going back through the blog for notes to write a journal-type book, so it's nice to have a fairly competent record, even if much of it is of passing interest. My latest concept for such a book would be subtitled What I Learned During the 2024 Election. Most of what I've learned is how irrational people can be in weighing matters of politics. Main downside to developing that idea is that most of my notes are from people who are well-informed and exceptionally rational. Explaining the 40-60% of Americans who are supposed to be voting for Trump today is going to take more research, and it's not likely to be pretty.

I'm a bit surprised that the rated count this week is only 19, but we're a couple days short of a week, and in a bit of a down cycle. I am finally nearing the end of my bedroom/closet project. I did some more caulking today, around the trim (which already has one coat, but in various places needs another). I'll sand and paint tomorrow. It'll probably take another day to touch up spots where I colored outside the lines. I'm a pretty lousy painter, so that happens more often than it should. That leaves the problem with the ceiling (masking tape pulled down strips and splotches of paint), but I'm going to kick that back to the guy who plastered and painted the ceiling in the first place, and it shouldn't take him long.

I got all the paneling up in the closet, including new boards for the ceiling. I put the lights back up this afternoon. Next thing there is to cut some trim boards and screw them in place. The boards are prepped, and most of that should go pretty quickly. I don't have a plan for finishing it yet, but we don't have to do that part before moving back into the bedroom (actually, more of an office, but it has a futon, which works for a spare bed). What we will still need to do is cleaning, sorting, and reorganizing, but that's an ongoing process everywhere.

My next big project should be the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. I'll try to set up the website next week, and get invites out the week after. Biggest uncertainty there is communications, as my email list last year (and mid-year) proved pretty unreliable. That probably means paying for a commercial list provider, as it's almost impossible to avoid spam blacklisting on your own -- presumably, that is doable if that's your business, otherwise you wouldn't have a business. We also need to vet new critics. I'm thinking of setting up an advisory board to help on things like that, as well as to sanity-check my own thinking and coding. If you're interested in helping, or just know of a critic we should be polling, please get in touch.

As for my own writing, the next two months should be a good time to re-evaluate what, if anything, I still might try to work on.

I've resisted checking the news all evening, which should hold out until I get this (and the Speaking of Which) updates up, around 11 PM CDT.

New records reviewed this week:

• T.K. Blue: Planet Bluu (2022 [2024], Jaja): [cd]: B+(**)
• John Cale: POPtical Illusion (2024, Domino): [sp]: B+(***)
• Avishai Cohen: Ashes to Gold (2023 [2024], ECM): [sp]: B+(**)
• The Cure: Songs of a Lost World (2024, Fiction): [sp]: B+(*)
• The Dare: What's Wrong With New York? (2024, Republic): [sp]: B+(*)
• Joe Fahey: Andrea's Exile (2024, Rough Fish): [sp]: B+(**)
• Nubya Garcia: Odyssey (2024, Concord Jazz): [sp]: B
• Rich Halley 4: Dusk and Dawn (2023 [2024], Pine Eagle): [cd]: A-
• Jazzmeia Horn: Messages (2024, Empress Legacy): [sp]: B+(**)
• Randy Ingram: Aries Dance (2024, Sounderscore): [cd]: B+(**)
• Ryan Keberle & Catharsis: Music Is Connection (2023-24 [2024], Alternate Side): [cd]: B+(***)
• Jason Keiser: Kind of Kenny (2024, OA2): [cd]: B+(**)
• Laura Marling: Patterns in Repeat (2024, Chryalis/Partisan): [sp]: B+(**)
• Thollem McDonas: Infinite-Sum Game (2023 [2024], ESP-Disk): [cd]: B+(***)
• Nacka Forum: Peaceful Piano (2024, Moserobie): [cd]: A-
• NLE Choppa: Slut Szn (2024, Warner, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Pony Boy All-Star Big Band: This Is Now: Live at Boxley's (2024, Pony Boy): [cd]: B+(**)
• Brandon Seabrook: Object of Unknown Function (2023 [2024], Pyroclastic): [cd]: B+(*)
• Luke Winslow-King: Flash-a-Magic (2024, Bloodshot): [sp]: B+(*)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959 (1959 [2024], Whaling City Sound) [10-11]

Old music:

• None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Lemadi Trio: Canonical Discourse (A New Wave of Jazz Axis) [10-15]
• Tonus: Analog Deviation (A New Wave of Jazz Axis) [10-15]
• Transition Unit: Fade Value (A New Wave of Jazz Axis) [10-15]
• Martina Verhoeven Quintet: Indicator Light (Live at Paradox 2023) (A New Wave of Jazz Axis) [10-15]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

Draft file opened 2024-11-01 5:10 PM.

Trying to wrap this up Monday afternoon, but I keep sinking into deep comments, like the Müller entry below, to which I could easily add another 3-5 paragraphs. Now I need to take a long break and do some housework, so I'm not optimistic that I'll be able to add much before posting late this evening. We're among the seeming minority who failed to advance vote, so will trek to the polls tomorrow and do our bit. As I've noted throughout (and even more emphatically in my Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Harris vs. Trump), I'm voting for Harris. While Kansas is considered a surefire Trump state -- the silver lining here is that we're exposed to relatively little campaigning -- around my neighborhood the Harris signs outnumber the Trump signs about 10-0 (seriously, I haven't seen a single one, although I've heard of Harris signs being stolen). Not much down ballot activity either, although if I find any more Democrats, I'll vote for them (minimally, our state legislators, who are actually pretty good).

In the end, it got late and I gave up. Perhaps I'll add some more tidbits tomorrow, but my more modest plans are to go vote, stop at a restaurant we like after voting, and finish the bedroom trim paint. Presumably there'll be a Music Week before the day's done, but not really a lot to report there.

Top story threads:

Israel:

• Mondoweiss:

  • [10-28] Day 388: Ongoing Israeli assault rips through northern Gaza, shuts down Kamal Adwan Hospital: "The last functioning hospital in north Gaza is forced out of service as Israeli forces continue to besiege and bomb Jabalia and Beit Lahia. In southern Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to take heavy losses."

  • [10-31] Day 391: Israel kills 200 Palestinians in Gaza in a single day: "There are no more hospitals in northern Gaza as Kamal Adwan Hospital goes out of service. In Lebanon, Hezbollah's new Secretary General, Naim Qassem, says the movement will not negotiate before a ceasefire."

  • [11-04] Day 395: Palestinians say Israel is using hunger as a weapon of war as it blocks 3,800 aid trucks from entering Gaza: "Israel continues to bomb Kamal Adwan Hospital over a week after raiding the compound in northern Gaza. Meanwhile, fabricated documents falsely attributed to Yahya Sinwar repudiate Israeli claims of Hamas rejectionism in ceasefire talks last summer."

• Ramzy Baroud: [10-31] Israel's extremists plan for the day after the genocide: "Gaza is ours, forever."

• Dave DeCamp: [11-05] Netanyahu fires Defense Minister Gallant: His co-defendant on genocide charges, they've evidently had a falling out with Gallant "calling for Israel to make 'painful concessions' to reach a hostage deal with Hamas."

• Jason Ditz: [11-04] Israel imposed evacuation in much of East Lebanon, but many attacks outside those zones.

• Anis Germani: [11-04] Is Israel using depleted uranium to bomb Lebanon? "Israel's use of 80 bunker-buster bombs to assassinate Hasan Nasrallah has raised concerns that it is using depleted uranium in its bombardment of Lebanon. We need an impartial investigation given Israel's track record of using prohibited weapons."

• Tareq S Hajjaj:

  • [10-31] Witnesses say the Israeli army is using facial recognition technology in its assault on north Gaza: "Witness testimony from northern Gaza shows that Israel is using facial recognition technology to organize how it conducts mass arrests and forcible displacement. Some Palestinians say the technology is also being used to carry out field executions."

  • [11-01] Israel's mass killing campaign in Gaza is escalating: "The last ten days of October saw an escalation in Israel's campaign of mass killing across Gaza, including in so-called 'safe zones.' The overall pattern of Israel's assaults points to an extermination campaign."

• Qassam Muaddi:

  • [11-01] Israel is hitting a wall in Lebanon. What is its endgame? "Israel's military campaign in souther Lebanon is failing. As Israel runs out of options, the US is scrambling for a way out of the Lebanese quagmire -- including by reviving hopes for a Gaza ceasefire." I don't trust anyone's reporting on ground operations in Lebanon, but "quagmire" implies that Israel is stuck, which I doubt. My impression is that Israel's bombing and ground operations in Lebanon are wanton and capricious -- things that they mostly do for the hell of it, perhaps to degrade Hezbollah, or simply to show the Lebanese people the peril they blame on Hezbollah, but nothing they can't retreat and regroup from if the going gets a bit sticky. One report cited here:

    • Amos Harel: [Israel's defense chiefs say fighting in Gaza and Lebanon has run its course. Does Netanyahu agree? The implication here is that Israel's defense leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to justify further operations on defense grounds. That they are continuing is a purely political directive, coming from Netanyahu, for purely political ends.

  • [11-04] Fake document scandal reveals Israeli efforts to undermine ceasefire talks: "A scandal over fabricated documents allegedly leaked by an aid to Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed Israel's efforts to sabotage Gaza ceasefire negotiations."

• Jonathan Ofir: [11-02] Israeli justice minister calls for 20-year prison sentence for citizens promoting sanctions against the state: "Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin is demanding a 20-year prison sentence for citizens who call for sanctions against Israeli leaders and military personnel."

• Fayha Shalash/Mera Aladam: [11-04] Armed Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes, cars and olive trees across West Bank.

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

• Michael Arria:

  • [10-29] The Shift: Trump seeks to capitalize on voter frustration with Harris over Gaza: "While Kamala Harris was getting booed by protesters in Michigan, Trump was also in the staet making a play to Arab and Muslim voters."

  • [10-31] The Shift: Biden ignored 500 reports of Israel attacking civilians with US weapons.

• Connor Echols: [10-29] Nation building is back! "Israel is breaking the Middle East, and the US is lining up to rebuild it." Well, talking about it, with lots of strings, including Israel calling all the shots. Echols used to be a staff writer for Responsible Statecraft, but seems to have landed in Robert Wright's Nnzero Substack.

• Robert E Hunter: [10-31] Israel using US election to take free hand against Gaza, Lebanon: "But even as a lame duck, will Biden do the right thing? Likely not."

• Anatol Lieven/Ted Snider: [10-23] Biden's 'leadership' is blowing the lid off two wars: "The president promised to contain Gaza and Ukraine but both conflicts have been a slow burn to something much bigger."

• Justin Logan: [10-15] No, Iran isn't America's 'greatest adversary': "VP Harris might have been trying to score points, but her comments are absurd."

• Paul R Pillar: [10-21] 41yrs ago: 220 Marines involved in Israel's war on Lebanon killed: If the US hadn't got ensnared in Tel Aviv's affairs, the bombing would never have happened."

• Mitchell Plitnick: [11-02] Israel's limited Iran attack reflects a dangerous regional agenda: "Even though Israel's much-anticipated strike on Iran was smaller than expected, the threat of a potential global war may actually be growing."

• Dave Reed:

  • [10-27] Weekly Briefing: Ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza.

  • [11-03] Weekly Briefing: US support for Israel will not be ended at the ballot box: "Can the U.S. claim to be a beacon of democracy while funding and arming a government carrying out genocide and ethnic cleansing against an entire people?"

Israel vs. world opinion:

• Juan Cole: [11-02] As UN warns entire population of Gaza is at risk of death, Bill Clinton says he's not keeping score. Here's a report on Clinton's campaign for Harris:

  • Sanjana Karanth: [11-01] Bill Clinton justifies the mass killings of Palestinians in racist Michigan speech. By the way, scrolling down, the next article is titled "Harris vows at Michigan rally to 'do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza'."

• Nada Elia: [11-01] On vote shaming, and lesser evils: "I will not be shamed into voting for a candidate who supports the genocide of the Palestinian people, and no one who supports progressive issues should be either." Hers is a vote against Harris -- not sure in favor of who or what -- and I think we have to respect her conviction, even if one disagrees with her conclusion. We need people opposed to genocide more than we need voters for Harris, not that the two need be exclusive. Elections never just test one red line, so they require us to look beyond simple moral judgments and make a messy political one. Agreed that Harris fails on this red line -- as does her principal (and only practical) opponent, arguably even worse[*] -- but there are other issues at play, some where Harris is significantly preferable to Trump, none where the opposite is the case. I don't have any qualms or doubts about voting for Harris vs. Trump. But I respect people who do.

  [*] Harris, like Biden (with greater weight of responsibility), is a de facto supporter of Israel committing genocide, but she does not endorse the concept, and remains in denial as to what is happening (unaccountably and, if you insist, inexcusably, as there is little room for debating the facts). Trump, on the other hand, appears to have explicitly endorsed genocide (e.g., in his comments like "finish the job!"). Both the racism that separates out groups for collective punishment -- of which genocide is an extreme degree -- and the penchant for violent punishment are usually right-wing traits, which makes them much more likely for Trump than for Harris. And Trump's right-wing political orientation is more likely to encourage and sustain genocide in the future, as it derives from his character and core political beliefs.

  Some other pieces on the genocide voting conundrum (probably more scattered about, since I added this grouping rather late):

  • Lily Greenberg Call: As a former staffer, I feel betrayed by Harris. But Trump would be catastrophic: "Progressive movements and Palestinians will suffer the most under Trump. We cannot abdicate our power within the Democratic Party, limited as it may be."

  • Yousef Munayyer: [11-04] The Harris campaign's missed opportunity on Palestine voters: "If it seems hard to understand the Palestine voter, it is likely because they have been living very different lives from most Americans over the past year."

  • Jonah Valdez: [11-01] "Every choice is loss": Voters on their decision amid genocide in Gaza: Stories of other voters weighing this same decision, some leaning with Elia, others not.

• Chris Hedges: [10-31] Israel's war on journalism.

  There are some 4,000 foreign reporters accredited in Israel to cover the war. They stay in luxury hotels. They go on dog and pony shows orchestrated by the Israeli military. They can, on rare occasions, be escorted by Israeli soldiers on lightning visits to Gaza, where they are shown alleged weapons caches or tunnels the military says are used by Hamas.

  They dutifully attend daily press conferences. They are given off-the-record briefings by senior Israeli officials who feed them information that often turns out to be untrue. They are Israel's unwitting and sometimes witting propagandists, stenographers for the architects of apartheid and genocide, hotel room warriors.

  Bertolt Brecht acidly called them the spokesmen of the spokesmen.

  And how many foreign reporters are there in Gaza? None.

  The Palestinian reporters in Gaza who fill the void often pay with their lives. They are targeted, along with their families, for assassination.

  At least 134 journalists and media workers in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, have been killed and 69 have been imprisoned, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, marking the deadliest period for journalists since the organization began collecting data in 1992.

• Jonathan Ofir: [10-30] New UN Special Rapporteur report warns Israel's genocide in Gaza could be expanding to the West Bank: "A new report by Francesca Albanese."

• Wamona Wadi: [11-03] CNN finally covered the Gaza genocide -- from the point of view of Israeli troops with PTSD: Don't laugh. That's a real thing, a form of casualty that's rarely calculated, or for that matter even anticipated, by war planners. It should be counted as reason enough not to start wars that can possibly be avoided, which is pretty much all of them. Perhaps it pales in comparison to the other forms of trauma unleashed by war, but it should be recognized and treated the only way possible, with peace.

• Videos: I have very little patience for watching videos on computer, but the one with Suárez came highly recommended, and the title shows us something we need to be talking about now. When I got there, I found much more, so I noted a few more promising titles (not all vetted, but most likely to be very informative).

  • Thomas Suárez: Justifying slaughter: How the cult of messianic Zionism conquered the west.

Election notes: First of all, I'm deliberately not reporting on polling, which right or wrong will be obsolete in a couple days, and saves me from looking at most of this week's new reporting. Two more notes this week: this section has sprawled this week, as I've wound up putting many pieces that cover both candidates, or otherwise turn on the election results, here; also, I'm struck by how little I'm finding about down-ballot races (even though a lot of money is being spent there). I'm sure I could find some surveys, as well as case stories, but Trump-Harris has so totally overshadowed them that I'd have to dig. And even though for most of my life, I've done just that, I feel little compulsion to do so right now.

• Thomas B Edsall: [10-30] Let me ask a question we never had to ask before: A survey of "a wide range of scholars and political strategists," asking not who will win, but who will blamed by the losers.

• Saleema Gul: [10-31] A community divided: With Gaza on their minds, Muslim and Arab Americans weigh their options ahead of election day: Such as they are, which isn't much.

• John Herrman: Democrats are massively outspending the GOP on social media: "It's not even close -- $182 million to just $45 million, according to one new estimate." As I recall, Republicans were way ahead on social media in 2016 (with or without Russian contributions), and that was seen as a big factor. (But also, as I recall, Facebook's algorithms amplified Trump's hateful lies, while Democratic memes were deemed too boring to bother with.)

• Ben Kamisar: [11-03] Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week. Most of this money, staggering amounts, is being spent on down-ballot races, including state referenda.

• Howard Lisnoff: [11-01] We're in some deep shit: Now that's a clickbait title, as you have to click to get to anything specific, of which many subjects are possibilities. Turns out it's mostly about Jill Stein: not what you'd call an endorsement -- his own view is summed up in the Emma Goldman quote, "if voting changed anything they'd make it illegal" -- but using anti-Stein hysteria as a prism for exposing the vacuousness of the Democrats, as if Trump wasn't in the race at all (his name only appears once, in a quote about 2016). Links herein:

  • Matt Flegenheimer: [10-23] Jill Stein won't stop. No matter who asks. "People in Stein's life have implored her to abandon her bid for president, lest she throw the election to Donald Trump. She's on the ballot in almost every critical state." This piece is, naturally, totally about how she might siphon votes from Harris allowing Trump to win, with nothing about her actual positions, or how they contrast with those of Harris and Trump. Even Israel only gets a single offhand mention:

    Her bid can feel precision-engineered to damage Ms. Harris with key subgroups: young voters appalled by the United States' support for Israel; former supporters of Bernie Sanders's presidential campaigns who feel abandoned by Democrats; Arab American and Muslim voters, especially in Michigan, where fury at Ms. Harris and President Biden has been conspicuous for months.

    The Sanders comment seems like a totally gratuitous dig -- he is on record as solidly for Harris even considering Israel, and few of his supporters are likely to disagree. The other two points are the same, and have been widely debated elsewhere (including several links in this post), but the key thing there is that while Stein may benefit from their disaffection, she is not the cause of it. The cause is American support for genocide, which includes Biden and Harris, but also Trump, Kennedy, and nearly everyone in Congress.

  • Glenn Greenwald: Kamala's worst answers yet? A 38:31 video with no transcript, something I have zero interest in watching, although the comments are suitably bizarre (most amusing: "Consequences of an arrogant oligarchy and descending empire").

• Dan Mangan: [11-02] Shock poll shows Harris leading Trump in Iowa. An exception to my "no polls stories" policy. My wife mentioned this poll to me, as a possible reason to vote for Harris in Kansas where she had been planning on a write-in.

• Parker Molloy: [11-04] We already know one big loser in this election: the mainstream media: "When your most loyal supporters start questioning your integrity, that's not just a red flag -- it's a siren blaring in the newsroom."

• Clara Ence Morse/Luis Melgar/Maeve Reston: [10-28] Meet the megmadonors pumping over $2.5 billion into the election: The breakdown of the top 50 is $1.6B Republican, $752M Democratic, with $214M "supportive of both parties" (mostly crypto and realtor groups). The top Democratic booster is Michael Bloomberg, but his $47.4M this time is a drop in the bucket compared to the money he spent in 2020 to derail Bernie Sanders.

• Nicole Narea: [11-01] 2024 election violence is already happening: "How much worse could it get if Trump loses?" I'm more worried about: how much worse could it get if Trump wins? It's not just frustration that drives violence. There's also the feeling that you can get away with it -- one example of which is the idea that Trump will pardon you, as he's already promised to the January 6 hoodlums. Nor should we be too sanguine in thinking that frustration violence can only come from the right. While rights are much more inclined to violence, anyone can get frustrated and feel desperate, and the right has offered us many examples of that turning violent.

• Margaret Simons: [11-02] Can democracy work without journalism? With the US election upon us, we may be about to find out: "Most serious news organisations are not serving the politically disengaged, yet it's these voters who will decide the next president." Seems like a good question, but much depends on what you mean by journalism. Although I have many complaints about quality, quantity doesn't seem to be much of a problem -- except, as compared to the quantity of PR, which is over the top, and bleeding into everything else. As for "soon find out," I doubt that. While honest journalism should have decided this election several months ago, the commonplace that we're now facing a "toss up" suggests that an awful lot of folks have been very poorly informed. Either that, or they don't give a fuck -- (not about their votes, but about what consequences they may bring -- which is a proposition that is hard to dismiss. There are many things that I wish reporters would research better, but Donald Trump isn't one of them.

• Jeffrey St Clair: [11-01] Notes on a phony campaign: strange days.

• Margaret Sullivan: [11-04] The candidates' closing campaign messages could not be more different: Well, aside from automatic support for America's global war machine, extending even to genocide in Israel, and the unexamined conviction that "the business of America is business," and that government's job is to promote that business everywhere. But sure, there are differences enough to decide a vote on: "There is hateful rhetoric and threats of retribution from one side, and messages of inclusion and good will from the other." But haven't we seen this "bad cop, good cop" schtick before? Or "speak softly, but carry a big stick"? These are the sort of differences that generate a lot of heat, but very little light.

• Zoe Williams: [10-31] An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics -- just as academics predicted: "Politicians have always courted the wealthy, but Elon Musk and co represent a new kind of donor, and an unprecedented danger to democracy."

• Endorsements:

  • Jonathan Chait: [11-04] The case for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump is totally obvious.

  • Josh Fox: [11-01] I'm an environmentalist. That's why I can't vote Green. "Award-winning filmmaker and director of Gasland Josh Fox on why he will never vote for Jill Stein."

  • Matt Stopera: [11-02] 5 celebrities who endorsed Trump this week, and 1 celeb who renounced their Trump endorsement: Endorsing Trump: Jake Paul, Buzz Aldrin, Mel Gibson, Bret Favre, and the McCloskeys (the gun-toting couple in St. Louis that tried to intimidate Black Lives Matter marchers). The switch from Trump to Harris: Nicky Jam (reggaeton star). But before all that, a couple non-headline Harris endorsements: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Nancy Sinatra, and Jennifer Aniston.

Trump:

• The New Republic: [10-21] The 100 worst things Trump has done since descending that escalator: "Some were just embarrassing. Many were horrific. All of them should disqualify him from another four years in the White House." I ran this last week, but under the circumstances let's run it again. If I had the time, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to write up 20+ more, many of which would land in the top 20. For instance, Israel only merits 2 mentions, at 76 and 71, and the latter was more about him attacking George Soros: no mention of moving the embassy to Jerusalem, or many other favors that contributed to the Oct. 7 revolt and genocide. Ditching the Iran deal came in at 8, but no mention of assassinating Iranian general Qasem Soleimani (I hope I don't need to explain why). There is only one casual reference to Afghanistan (22. Escalates the drone war), none that he protracted the war four years, knowing that Biden would be blamed for his surrender deal to the Taliban. He gets chided for his being "pen pals with Kim Jong Un," but not for failing to turn his diplomacy into an actual deal. Not all of these items belong in a Trivial Pursuit game, but most would be overshadowed by real policy disasters if reporters could look beyond their Twitter feeds.

• Zack Beauchamp: [11-02] It's not alarmist: A second Trump term really is an extinction-level threat to democracy: "Why a second Trump term is a mortal threat to democracy -- though perhaps not the way you think." Having written a recent book -- The Reactionary Spirit: How America's Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World (I bought a copy, but haven't gotten into it yet -- on this broad theme, he predictably offers us a rehash with a minor update. It's nice to see him dialing back the alarmism, enough to see the real longer-term erosion:

  If the first Trump term was akin to the random destruction of a toddler, a second would be more like the deliberate demolition of a saboteur. With the benefit of four years of governing experience and four more years of planning, Trump and his team have concluded that the problem with their first game of Jenga was that they simply did not remove enough of democracy's blocks.

  I do not think that, over the course of four more years, Trump could use these plans to successfully build a fascist state that would jail critics and install himself in power indefinitely. This is in part because of the size and complexity of the American state, and in part because that's not really the kind of authoritarianism that works in democracies nowadays.

  But over the course of those years, he could yank out so many of American democracy's basic building blocks that the system really could be pushed to the brink of collapse. . . .

  A second Trump term risks replacing Rawls's virtuous cycle with a vicious one. As Trump degrades government, following the Orbánist playbook with at least some success, much of the public would justifiably lose their already-battered faith in the American system of government. And whether it could long survive such a disaster is anyone's guess.

  While "toddler" is certainly apt, eight years later he hasn't changed that aspect much, and in many ways he's even regressed. His narcissistic petulance is ever more pronounced, which may be why many people dismiss the threat of a second term as hysteria. No matter how naughty he wants to be, even as president he can't do all that much damage on his own. He looks like, and sounds like, the same deranged blowhard he's always been, but one thing is very different this time: he and his activist cult have found each other. As president, he will empower them from day one, and they'll not only do things he can only dream of, but they will feed him new fantasies, carefully tailored to flatter him and his noxious notions of greatness, because they know, as we all should realize by now, that job one is stoking his ego.

  No doubt much of what they try will blow up before it causes real harm -- nobody thinks that, even with a Republican Senate, Big Pharma is going to let RFK Jr. destroy their vaccination cash cow -- and much of what does get promulgated and/or enacted will surely blow back, driving his initially record-low approval rates into the ground. But he knows better than to let GOP regulars construct "guard rails" with responsible "adults in the room." The loyalty of everyone he might hire now can be gauged by their track record -- both what they've said in the past, and how low they can bow and scrape now (Vance is an example of the latter, of how to redeem yourself in Trump's eyes, although I'd surmise that Trump's still pretty wary of him).

  PS: Here's a video of Beauchamp talking about his book: The realignment: The rise of reactionary politics.

• Aaron Blake: [11-01] Trump's latest violent fantasy: "Trump keeps painting pictures of violence against his foes despite allegations of fascism. And Republicans keep shrugging."

• Sidney Blumenthal: [11-02] Donald Trump's freakshow continues unabated: "Trump insists on posing as the salient question of the election: are you crazier today than you were four years ago?"

• Kevin T Dugan: [11-01] Wall Street's big bet on a Trump win: "Gold, bitcoin, prisons, and oil are all thought to be the big moneymakers for the financial class if Trump wins another term." More compelling reasons to sink Trump.

• Michelle Goldberg: [11-01] What I truly expect if an unconstrained Trump retakes power.

• Steven Greenhouse: [10-30] Trump wants you to believe that the US economy is doing terribly. It's untrue: "Despite his claims to the contrary, unemployment is low, inflation is way down, and job growth is remarkably strong." But unless you're rich, can you really tell? And if you're rich, the choice comes down to: if you merely want to get richer, you'd probably be better off with the Democrats (who have consistently produced significantly higher growth rates, ever since the Roaring '20s crashed and burned), but if you really want to feel the power that comes with riches, you can go with one of your own, and risk the embarrassment. And funny thing is, once you've decided which side you're on, your view of the economy will self-confirm. From any given vantage point, you can look up or down. That's a big part of the reason why these stories, while true enough, have virtually no impact (except among the neoliberal shills that write them).

• Arun Gupta: [11-01] Triumph of the swill: A night at the Garden with Trump and MAGA. About as good a blow-by-blow account as I've seen so far. Ends on this note:

  Eight years wiser and with four years to plan, Trump, Miller, and the rest of MAGA are telling us they plan to occupy America. They are itching to use the military to terrify, subjugate, and ethnically cleanse. The only liberation will be for their violent desires and that of their Herrenvolk who went wild at mentions of mass deportations. They loved the idea.

  Also by Gupta:

  • [10-29] Night of the Fash: "At Madison Square Garden with Trump and his lineup of third-rate grifters and bigots." An earlier, shorter draft.

  • [11-04] Kamala says she'll "end the war in Gaza": "For opponents of Israel's genocide, sticking to principles gets results. But for Harris, her flip-flop is a sign of desperation." I don't really believe her -- it's going to take more than a sound bite to stand up to the Israel lobby -- but I would welcome the sentiment, and not just make fun of her. It may be desperate, but it's also a tiny bit of timely hope, much more plausible than the magic Trump imagines.

• Margaret Hartmann: [11-01] Trump's ties to Jeffrey Epstein: Everything we've learned: "Michael Wolff claims he has Epstein tapes about Trump, and saw compromising Trump photos."

• Antonia Hitchens:

  • [11-03] Trump's final days on the campaign trail: "Under assault from all sides, in the last weeks of his campaign, the former President speaks often of enemies from within, including those trying to take his life."

  • [10-19] Inside the Republican National Committee's poll-watching army: "The RNC says it has recruited tens of thousands of volunteers to observe the voting process at precincts across the country. Their accounts of alleged fraud could, as one Trump campaign official put it, "establish the battlefield" for after November 5th."

• Chris Hooks: [11-02] The brainless ideas guiding Trump's foreign policy: "Conservatives recently gathered in Washington to explain how they would rule the world in a second Trump term. The result was incoherent, occasionally frightening, and often very dumb." My first reaction was that one could just as easily write "The brainless ideas guiding Democrats' foreign policy," but then I saw that the author is referring to a specific conference, the Richard Nixon Foundation's "Grand Strategy Summit."

• Marina Hyde: [11-01] Trump may become president again -- but he's already a useful idiot to the mega rich: "They make nice with him when it suits, ridicule him when he's not listening. Their lives are money and gossip -- with him they get both."

• Ben Jacobs: [11-04] The evolving phenomenon of the Trump rally: "Rarely boring, always changing, and essential to his appeal."

• Hannah Knowles/Marianne LeVine/Isaac Arnsdorf: [11-01] Trump embraces violent rhetoric, suggests Liz Cheney should have guns 'trained on her face': "The GOP nominee often describes graphic and gruesome scenes of crimes and violence, real and imagined."

• Eric Levitz: [11-01] Elon Musk assures voters that Trump's victory would deliver "temporary hardship"; "And he's half right." Meaning the hardship, but not necessarily "temporarily":

  Now, as the race enters the homestretch, Musk is trying to clinch Trump's victory with a bracing closing argument: If our side wins, you will experience severe economic pain.

  If elected, Trump has vowed to put Musk in charge of a "government efficiency commission," which would identify supposedly wasteful programs that should be eliminated or slashed. During a telephone town hall last Friday, Musk said his commission's work would "necessarily involve some temporary hardship."

  Days later, Musk suggested that this budget cutting -- combined with Trump's mass deportation plan -- would cause a market-crashing economic "storm." . . .

  This is one of the more truthful arguments that Musk has made for Trump's election, which is to say, only half of it is false. If Trump delivers on his stated plans, Americans will indeed suffer material hardship. But such deprivation would neither be necessary for -- nor conducive to -- achieving a healthier or more sustainable economy.

  After discussing tariffs and mass deportation, Levitz offer a section on "gutting air safety, meat inspections, and food stamps will not make the economy healthier." He then offers us a silver lining:

  Trump's supporters might reasonably argue that none of this should trouble us, since he rarely fulfills his campaign promises and will surely back away from his economically ruinous agenda once in office. But "don't worry, our candidate is a huge liar" does not strike me as a much better message than "prepare for temporary hardship."

• Nicholas Liu: [10-31] Trump nearly slips attempting to enter a garbage truck for a campaign stunt.

• Carlos Lozada: [10-31] Donald and Melania Trump were made for each other: Basically a review of her book, Melania. The title could just as well read "deserve each other," but that suggests a measure of equality that has never been remotely true.

  Melania's relationship with Donald is among the book's haziest features. She depicts her initial attraction to him in superficial terms: She was "captivated by his charm," was "drawn to his magnetic energy" and appreciated his "polished business look." He was not "flashy or dramatic," she writes, but "down-to-earth." And though we know how he speaks about women in private, Melania writes that "in private, he revealed himself as a gentleman, displaying tenderness and thoughtfulness." The one example she offers of his thoughtfulness is a bit unnerving: "Donald to this day calls my personal doctor to check on my health, to ensure that I am OK and that they are taking perfect care of me."

• Clarence Lusane: [10-31] The black case against Donald Trump: "Hold Trump accountable for a lifetime of anti-black racism."

• Branko Marcetic: [10-31] 'Anti-war' Trump trying to outflank Harris at critical moment: "It may be a cynical strategy, but he seems to have read the room while she has chosen a more confused, if not hawkish, path." This has long been my greatest worry in the election.

  • Jeet Heer: [11-03] The dangers of Trump's cynical anti-war message: Interview with Matt Duss.

  • Michael Galant: [2021-01-20] Trump the anti-war president was always a myth: "Let the record show: Trump poured fuel on our endless wars and kicked diplomacy to the curb." By the way, the Marcetic piece led me to an old (but still relevant) one:

• Amanda Marcotte:

  • [10-31] Trump's closing argument is toxic masculinity.

  • [11-01] Donald Trump's plan to "protect" women in action: Two dead, another arrested for miscarriage: "Trump's abortion bans keep proving that by 'protect,' MAGA means they will punish and control." Related here:

    • Cassandra Jaramillo/Kavitha Surana: [10-30] A Texas woman died after the hospital said it would be a "crime" to intervene in her miscarriage: Josseli Barnica.

    • Lizzie Presser/Kavitha Surana: [11-01] A pregnant teenager died after trying to get care in three visits to Texas emergency rooms: Nevaeh Crane.

  • {11-04] Trump is terrible for women -- but that doesn't mean he's good for men: "Trump can ruin the economy, but he can't make your wife come back."

• Peter McLaren: [11-03] Donald Trump versus a microphone: a head bobbing performance.

• Jan-Werner Müller: [11-04] What if Trump's campaign is cover for a slow-motion coup? "Even if Trump can't really mobilize large numbers of people to the streets, just prolonging a sense of chaos might be enough." Why are people so pre-occupied with imagining present and future threats that have already happened? I'm sorry to have to break the news to you, especially given that you think the election tomorrow is going to be so momentous, but the "slow motion coup" has already happened. Trump, while easily the worst imaginable outcome, is just the farce that follows tragedy. The polarization isn't driven by issues, but by personality types. A lot of people will vote for Trump not because they agree with him, but because in a rigged system, he's the entertainment option. He will make the other people suffer -- his very presence drives the rest of us crazy -- and Trump voters get off on that. And a lot of people will vote against him, because they don't want to suffer, or in some rare cases, they simply don't like seeing other people suffer. Harris, actually much more than Biden or Obama or either Clinton, is a very appealing candidate for those people (I can say us here), but is still can be trusted not to try to undo the coup, to restore any measure of real democracy, let alone "power to the people."

  Here's a way to look at it: skipping past 1776-1860, there have been two eras in American history, each beginning in revolution, but which fizzled in its limited success, allowing reaction to set in, extending the power of the rich to a breaking point. The first was the Civil War and Reconstruction, which gave way to rampant corruption, the Gilded Age and Jim Crow, ultimately collapsing in the Great Depression. The second was the New Deal, which came up with the idea of countervailing powers and a mixed economy with a large public sector, mitigating the injustices of laissez-faire while channeling the energy of capitalism into building a widely shared Affluent Society.

  But, unlike the Marxist model of proletarian revolution, the New Deal left the upper crust intact, and during WWII they learned how to use government for their own means. The reaction started to gain traction after Republicans won Congress in 1946, and teamed with racist Democrats to pass Taft-Hartley and other measures, which eventually undermined union power, giving businesses a freer hand to run things. Then came the Red Scare and the Cold War, which Democrats joined as readily as Republicans, not realizing it would demolish their popular base. Dozens of similar milestones followed, each designed to concentrate wealth and power, which both parties increasingly catered to, seeing no alternative, and comforted with the perks of joining the new plutocracy.

  One key milestone was the end of the "fairness doctrine" in the 1980s, which surrendered the notion that there is a public interest as opposed to various private interests, and incentivized moguls to buy up media companies and turn them into propaganda networks (most egregiously at Fox, but really everywhere). Another was the end of limits on campaign finance, which has finally reduced electoral politics to an intramural sport of billionaires. (Someone should issue a set of billionaire trading cards, like baseball cards, with stats and stories on the back. I googled, and didn't find any evidence of someone doing this.) Aside from Bernie Sanders, no one runs for president (or much else) without first lining up a billionaire (or at least a near-wannabe). They have about as much control over who gets taken seriously and can appear on a ballot as the Ayatollah does in Iran.

  The main thing that distinguishes this system from a coup is that it's unclear who's ultimately in charge, or even if someone is. Still, that could be a feature, especially as it allows for an infinite series of scapegoats when things go wrong -- as, you may have noticed, they inevitably do.

• Nicholas Nehamas/Erica L Green: [10-31] Trump says he'll protect women, 'like it or not,' evoking his history of misogyny.

• Jonathan O'Connell/Leigh Ann Caldwell/Lisa Rein: [11-02] Conservative group's 'watch list' targets federal employees for firing.

• Andrew Prokop: [09-26] The Architect: Stephen Miller's dark agenda for a second Trump term: "Miller has spent years plotting mass deportation. If Trump wins, he'll put his plans into action." I think the most important thing to understand about Miller isn't how malevolent he is, but that he's the archetype, the exemplar for all future Trump staff. He clearly has his own deep-seated agenda, but what he's really excelled at is binding it to Trump, mostly through utterly shameless flattery.

• Aaron Regunberg: [11-01] Why is the Anti-Defamation League running cover for Trump? "Yes, it's fair to compare Trump's Madison Square Guarden spectacle to the Nazi rally of 1939."

• Aja Romano/Anna North: [11-05] The new Jeffrey Epstein tapes and his friendship with Trump, explained.

• Dylan Scott: [10-30] The existential campaign issue no one is discussing: "What happens if another pandemic strikes -- and Trump is the president." Mentions bird flu (H5N1) as a real possibility, but given Trump's worldview and personal quirks, one could rephrase this as: what happens if any unexpected problem strikes? I'm not one inclined to look to presidents for leadership or understanding, but the least we should expect is the third option in "lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way." Trump is almost singularly incapable of any of those three options. Moreover, where most people manage to learn things from experience, Trump jumps to the wrong conclusions. Case in point: when Trump got Covid-19 in 2016, he could have learned from the experience how severe the illness is, and how devastating it could be for others; instead, he recovered, through treatment that wasn't generally available, and came out of it feeling invincible, holding superspreader events and ridiculing masks. I've long believed that a big part of his polling bounce was due to people foolishly mistaking his idiocy for bravura.

• Marc Steiner: [10-30] The failures of liberals and the left have helped Trump's rise: "Feckless Democrats and a disorganized Left have fed fuel to the MAGA movement's fire." Interview with Bill Fletcher Jr. and Rick Perlstein.

• Kirk Swearingen: [11-02] Donald Trump was never qualified to be president -- or anything else: "After a lifetime of lying, failure and incompetence, this conman stands at the gates of power once again."

• Michael Tomasky: [11-04] Donald Trump has lost his sh*t: "There is no 'context' for performing fellatio on a microphone. He's gone batty. The only remaining question is whether enough voters recognize it."

Vance, and other Republicans:

• Robert F Kennedy Jr.:

  • Jonathan Chait: [10-31] Trump transition chair blurts out plan to end all vaccines: "Kook Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to steer Trump public health."

  • Jake Piazza: [11-03] Trump says RFK Jr. plan to remove fluoride from public water 'sounds okay to me'.

  • Melody Schreiber: Trump unleashing RFK Jr. on public health would be a disaster: "Kennedy, an anti-vaxxer with a chilling past, says Trump has promised to name him head of Health and Human Services. The Trump camp has denied this -- unconvincingly."

  • Andrew Ross Sorkin, et al.: [11-01] Why businesses worry about R.F.K. Jr. I'm guessing, money?

• John Ball: [11-03] My strange year tracking JD Vance, MAGA's future.

• Charles Bethea:

  • [11-04] The Americans prepping for a second civil war: "Many now believe that the US could descend into political violence. Some are joining survivalist communities, canning food -- and buying guns."

  • [11-02] How pro-Trump activists hijacked Georgia's election board.

• Dan Dinello: [11-01] The super-rich have a long history of backing fascism and buying the White House: it's happening again: Mostly on Elon Musk, this time, although the history goes back to Henry Ford.

• David Friedlander: [11-03] Elon Musk's Pennsylvania playbook: "It's secretive and chaotic -- but Trump campaign officials are thrilled."

• Sarah Jones: [11-04] The real class war against normal people.

• Andrew Marantz: [11-01] The Tucker Carlson road show: "After his Fox show was cancelled, Carlson spent a year in the wilderness, honing his vision of what the future of Trumpism might look like. This fall, he took his act on tour."

• Rachel Monroe: [10-30] The conservative strategy to ban abortion nationwide.

• Timothy Noah: How Republicans get away with fleecing their own voters: "Democrats are highly responsive to voter sentiment. Republicans are not, yet they win reelection anyway." This could have been an interesting article, especially if someone figured out why Republicans seem to be so willing to vote against their own interests, or even if it was just about their eagerness to suck up Trump merch. But are the Democrats actually better, at least in terms of attentiveness? They campaign on donor-approved, poll-tested issues, but rarely entertain anything else, even if it actually has a lot of popular support.

Harris:

• Eric Levitz: [10-22] If Harris loses, expect Democrats to move right: "Even though Harris is running as a moderate, progressives are likely to get blamed for her defeat." I haven't read this, as it's locked up as a "special feature for Vox Members," but the headline is almost certainly wrong, and the subhed is very disputable -- I've already seen hundreds of pieces arguing that if Harris fails, it will be because she moved too far to the right, and in doing so risked discredit of principles that actually resonate more with voters. (And if she wins, it will be because she didn't cut corners like that on abortion, but stuck to a strong message.) No doubt, if she loses, the Democrats and "centrist" who never miss a chance to slam the left will do so again -- you can already see this in the Edsall piece, op. cit. -- but how credible will they be this time? (After, e.g., trying to blame first Sanders then Putin for Hillary Clinton's embarrassing failure in 2016.)

  If Harris loses, she will be pilloried for every fault from every angle, which may be unfair, but is really just a sign of the times, a rough measure of the stakes. But if Trump wins, the debate about who to blame is going to become academic real fast. Republicans are not going to see a divided nation they'd like to heal with conciliatory gestures. They're going to plunge the knife deeper, and twist it. And as they show us what the right really means, they will drive lots of people to the left, to the people who first grasp what was going wrong, and who first organized to defend against the right. And the more Trump and his goons fuck up (and they will fuck up, constantly and cluelessly), the more people will see the left as prescient and principled. The left has a coherent analysis of what's gone wrong, and what can and should be done about it. They've been held back by the centrists -- the faction that imagines they can win by appealing to the better natures of the rich while mollifying the masses with paltry reforms and panic over the right -- but loss by Harris, following Clinton's loss, will leave them even more discredited.

  As long-term politics, one might even argue that a Trump win would be the best possible outcome for the left. No one (at least, no one I know of) on the left is actually arguing that, largely because we are sensitive enough to acute pain we wish to avoid even the early throes of fascist dictatorship, and possibly because we don't relish natural selection winnowing our leadership down to future Lenins and Stalins. But when you see Republicans as odious as Bret Stephens and George Will endorsing Harris, you have to suspect that they suspect that what I'm saying is true.

• Stephen Prager/Alex Skopic: [11-01] Every Kamala Harris policy, rated. This is a seriously important piece, the kind of things issues-oriented voters should be crying out for. But the platforms exists mostly to show that Harris is a serious issues-oriented candidate, and to give her things to point to when she pitches various specific groups. Anything that she wants will be further compromised when the donor/lobbyists and their hired help (aka Congress, but also most likely her Cabinet and their minions) get their hands on the actual proposals. Given that the practical voting choice is just between Harris and Trump, that seems like a lot of extra work -- especially the parts, like everything having to do with foreign policy, that will only make you more upset.

  Nathan J Robinson introduced this piece with an extended tweet, making the obvious contrasts to Trump ("a nightmare on another level"). I might as well unroll his post here:

  The differences between a Trump and Harris presidency: An unprecedented deportation program with armed ICE agents breaking down doors and tearing families from their homes in unfathomable numbers, total right-wing capture of the court system, ending every environmental protection.

  Workplace safety rules will be decimated (remember, the right doesn't believe you should have water breaks in the heat), Israel will be given a full green light to "resettle" Gaza, all federal efforts against climate change will cease, international treaties will be ripped up . . .

  There will be a war on what remains of abortion rights (if you believe the right won't try to ban it federally you're the world's biggest sucker), protests will be ruthlessly cracked down on (with the military probably, as Tom Cotton advocated), journalists might be prosecuted . . .

  Organized labor's progress will be massively set back, with Trump letting policy be dictated by billionaire psychopaths like Elon Musk who think workers are serfs. JD Vance endorsed a plan for a massive war on teachers' unions. Public health will be overseen by RFK antivaxxers . . .

  If you think things cannot be worse, I would encourage you to expand your imagination. Trump is surrounded by foaming-at-the-mouth authoritarians who believe they are in a war for the soul of civilization and want to annihilate the left. I am terrified and you should be too.

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

• Ana Marie Cox: [11-01] Tim Walz has broken Tucker Carlson's brain: "The former Fox News host is so flummoxed by Kamala Harris's running mate that he's resorting to immature, homophobic schoolyard taunts."

• Ralph Nader: [11-04] The Democratic Party still can adopt winning agendas. Obviously, the "there is still time" arguments are finally moot for 2024, not that the principles are wrong. This makes me wonder what would have happened had Nader run as a Democrat in 2000, instead of on a third party. Sure, Gore would have won most of the primaries, but he could have gotten a sizable chunk of votes, possibly nudged Gore left of Lieberman and Clinton, and if Gore still lost, set himself up for an open run in 2004.

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

• Nina Burleilgh: [10-31] Justice Alito's royalist cosplay: "He's hanging out with Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis and donned a Savoy-blue wool cape to become a Constantinian knight."

• Ian Millhiser: [11-01] The Supreme Court decides not to toss out thousands of Pennsylvania ballots: "One of the worst ideas in US constitutional law will remain dead."

Climate and environment:

• Friederike Otto: [11-04] Why did so many die in Spain? Because Europe still hasn't accepted the realities of extreme weather.

Business, labor, and Economists:

• Kim Bhasin/Alessandra Migliaccio: [03-27] How Michael Rubin ended up holding all the cards: "Hijacked contracts. Scuttled public offerings. Sealth acquisitions. The Fanatics CEO famous for his Hamptons white parties has become the most feared dealmaker of his generation." I only found this because I was searching "billionaire trading cards," and temporarily confused this one with another Rubin. For all of his graft and his many services to the rich, the latter seems to only be worth a measly $200 million, whereas Forbes pegs Michael Rubin at $10.6 billion.

• Eric Levitz: [10-31] Is Google a bigger threat to democracy than Trump? A debate. Comparing two different categories of things just to click bait a headline. Interview with antitrust agitator Barry Lynn -- I can recommend his 2010 book, Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction.

  • Barry C Lynn: The antitrust revolution: "Liberal democracy's last stand against Big Tech." The Harpers article referred to in the interview, previously critiqued by Levitz in: The one big thing progressive critics of Big Business get wrong: "Corporate power isn't the cause of every social problem." (This argument is supposed to convince us that corporate power isn't ever a problem?)

Ukraine and Russia:

• Aaron Sobczak: [10-31] Diplomacy Watch: Russia makes substantial gains in Ukraine's east: "Kyiv is faced with troop shortages, while North Korean soldiers are sent to assist Moscow."

• Constant Méheut/Josh Holder: [10-31] Russia's swift march forward in U kraine's east: In maps and charts. Not a huge amount of territory, but since May the only significant gains have been by Russia.

• Julian E Barnes/Eric Schmitt/Helene Cooper/Kim Barker: [11-01] As Russia advances, US fears Ukraine has entered a grim phase: "Weapons supplies are no longer Ukraine's main disadvantage, American military officials say." Surprising pessimism, coming from the American Pravda.

• Eugene Doyle: [11-01] The Ukraine War is lost. Three options remain.

• Julie Hollar: [10-15] Media consistently in favor of crossing Putin's red lines: "Outlets refuse to take the Kremlin's warnings seriously."

• Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [10-30] Nuland & Maddow back at the red string conspiracy board: "The former State Department official tells MSNBC that Trump, Elon, and Putin are "all on the same team." I really hate this argument. I don't like Putin any more than you do, but the US needs to come up with some way to live and work with Russia, and personal and political vilification just gets in the way. Even if the intent here is simply to slam Trump, which in itself if a worthy job, what's implicit is a hardening of the conflict with Putin, and that only makes already difficult matters worse.

Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:

• Kate Aronoff: [10-29] How American sanctions fuel terrible climate policy around the world: "Reducing foreign governments' revenue means reducing the money they have to implement climate adaptation and mitigation policies."

• Umair Irfan: [10-29] Mexico may be at the cusp of one of its biggest transformations in decades: "Claudia Sheinbaum, the country's new president, is already reshaping its energy industry."

Other stories:

• Victoria Chamberlin: [11-02] How Americans came to hate each other: "And how we can make it stop." Interview between Noel King and Lilliana Mason, author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (2018), and Radical American Partisanship (2022, with Nathan P Kalmoe). She seems to have a fair amount of data, but not much depth. There is very little hint here that the polarization is asymmetrical. While both sides see the other as treats to their well-being, the nature of those threats are wildly different, as are the remedies (not that the promise of is in any way delivered).

• Ezra Klein: [11-01] Are we on the cusp of a new political order? Interview with Gary Gerstle, author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. I've noted him as a "big picture" historian, but I've never read him. But he makes a fair amount of sense in talking about neoliberalism here, even though I resist rooting it my beloved New Left. But I can see his point that a focus on individual freedom and a critique of the institutions of the liberal power elite could have served the reactionaries, not least by pushing some liberals (notably Charles Peters) to refashion themselves, which proved useful for Democratic politicians from Jimmy Carter on. This sort of dovetails with my argument that the New Left was a massive socio-cultural success, winning major mind share on all of its major fronts (against war and racism, for women and the environment) without ever seizing power, which was deeply distrusted. That failure, in part because working class solidarity was discarded as Old Left thinking, allowed the reactionaries to bounce back, aided by neoliberals, who helped them consolidate economic power.

  Gerstle offers this quote from Jimmy Carter's 1978 state of the union address:

  Government cannot solve our problems. It can't set our goals. It cannot define our vision. Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities or cure illiteracy or provide energy. And government cannot mandate goodness.

  One thing I'm struck by here is that four of these sentences immediately strike us as plausible, given how little trust we still have in government -- a trust which, one should stress, was broken by the Vietnam War. However, the other sentence is plainly false, and Carter seems to be trying to pull a fast one on us, disguising a pretty radical curtailment of functions that government is the only remedy for: eliminating poverty (spreading wealth and power), providing a bountiful economy (organizing fair markets and making sure workers are paid enough to be consumers), reducing inflation, saving cities, curing illiteracy (schools), providing energy (TVA, for example; more privatization here, not the best of solutions, but kept in check by regulation -- until it wasn't, at which point you got Enron, which blew up).

  But once you realize you're being conned, go back and re-read the paragraph again, and ask why? It's obvious that government can solve problems, because it does so all the time. The question is why doesn't it solve more problems? And the answer is often that it's being hijacked by special interests, who pervert it for their own greed (or maybe just pride). Setting goals, defining vision, and mandating goodness are less tangible, which moves them out of the normal functioning of government. But such sentences only make sense if you assume that government is an independent entity, with its own peculiar interests, and not simply an instrument of popular will. If government works for you, why can't it promote your goals, vision, and goodness? Maybe mandates (like the "war on drugs") are a step too far, because democracies should not only reflect the will of the majority but also must respect and tolerate the freedom of others.

• Elizabeth Kolbert: [2017-02-19] Why facts don't change our minds: An old piece, seemingly relevant again."

Obituaries

• Quincy Jones:

  • Ben Ratliff: [11-04] Quincy Jones, giant of American music, dies at 91.

Books

• Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Message: I'm finally reading this book, so linking it here was the easiest way to pick up the cover image. It took a while to get good, but the major section on Israel/Palestine is solid and forceful.

Music (and other arts?)

• Consumer guidance:

  • Christian Iszchak: [11-03] An acute case: 3 November 2024.

  • Steve Pick: [11-01] Best new records I heard in October, 2024.

  • Semipop Life: [11-03] Herstory often rhymes: "Doechii, Allen Lowe, Sabrina Carpenter, Jonathan Tetelman, and more!"

Chatter

• Dean Baker: [11-03] quick, we need a major national political reporter to tell us Donald Trump is not suffering from dementia, otherwise people might get the wrong idea. [on post quoting Trump ("we always have huge crowds and never any empty seats") while panning camera on many empty seats.]

• Jane Coaston: [11-04] Every white nationalist is convinced that almost every other person is also a white nationalist and that's a level of confidence in the popularity of one's views I do not understand.

  Rick Perlstein comments: I have a riff about that in my next book. I call it "epistemological narcissism": right-wingers can't imagine anyone could think differently than themselves. They, of coruse, only being different in having the courage to tell the truth . . .

• Iris Demento: [11-05] Happy crippling anxiety day [followed by bullet list from 1972:

  • "Nixon Now" - Richard M. Nixon, 1972 (also, "Nixon Now, More than Ever" and "President Nixon. Now more than ever")
  • "Come home, America" - George McGovern, 1972
  • "Acid, Amnesty, and Abortion for All" - 1972 anti-Democratic Party slogan, from a statement made to reporter Bob Novak by Missouri Senator Thomas F. Eagleton (as related in Novak's 2007 memoir, Prince of Darkness)
  • "Dick Nixon Before He Dicks You" - Popular anti-Nixon slogan, 1972
  • "They can't lick our Dick" - Popular campaign slogan for Nixon supporters

  Remembering 1972, I contributed a comment:

  1972 was the first time I voted. I hated Nixon much more than I hate Trump today. (Not the word I would choose today; maybe I retired it after Nixon?) I voted for McGovern, and for Bill Roy, who ran a remarkable campaign against the hideous Bob Dole, and for Jim Juhnke against our dull Republican Rep. Garner Shriver. Those three were among the most decent and thoughtful people who ever ran for public office in these parts. I voted for whatever Republican ran against the horrible Vern Miller and his sidekick Johnny Darr. In a couple cases, I couldn't stand either D or R, so wasted my vote with the Prohibitionist (a minor party, but still extant in KS). Not a single person I voted for won. I was so despondent, I didn't vote again until 1996, when I couldn't resist the opportunity to vote against Dole again. (I was in MA at the time.) I've voted regularly since then. After moving back to KS in 1999, I got another opportunity to vote for whatever Republican ran against Vern Miller, and we beat him this time (although for the most part, my winning pct. remains pretty low).

• Paul Krugman: [no link, but cited in a post called Trump could make contagion great again] I expect terrible things if Trump wins. Until recently, however, "explosive growth in infectious diseases" wasn't on my Bingo card [link to article on RFK Jr. saying "Trump promised him 'control' of HHS and USDA]

Local tags (these can be linked to directly): music.

Original count: 135 links, 9115 words

Current count: 160 links, 10343 words (13232 total)

Daily Log

I will shortly open up a draft file for one more Speaking of Which -- definitely the last before the November 5 election, and I can see a case for making it the last ever, although I doubt I'll go that far. Woke up this morning trying to reformulate my understanding of Donald Trump, perhaps spurred on by the two comments I received on the endorsement piece. Elias Vlanton wrote in:

We disagree about the election, and probably the nature of the two parties. I am voting Green, I would do so even in a battleground state. From what you wrote, I think the Republicans/Trump are not as evil as you think, and the Democrats are not as benign as you hope.

Laura Tillem filed the only comment so far:

You say: "Presumably she has researched the electorate and knows much better than I do just how to pitch them." I question this, I expect her neoliberal assumptions limit what she can learn about the electorate.

I responded with a comment of my own:

Assumptions always guide research, and bad assumptions can send it disastrously astray. But Harris, as opposed to someone like Chait, isn't an ideologist simply out to prove a point. She has a practical goal, to win the election, and she has the money to hire researchers to help her find out what she needs to say and do to win that election. And while some of those researchers may have sucked up to her to get the job, they surely know that they'll ultimately be judged on results -- on whether she wins the election. You and I have hunches and opinions, and they may on average be better than hers, but we don't have anything like the data she commands -- and presumably is learning from, and as such she may have learned things I haven't. We can second-guess each other until we turn blue, but nobody knows until they count the votes. At this stage, I see no better alternative than to trust her. After Tuesday, the wave of probabilities will collapse into a fact, and we'll all have to adjust accordingly.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, October archive (final).

Tweet: Music Week: 34 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 43099 [43065] rated (+34), 41 [46] unrated (-5).

New records reviewed this week:

• Amyl and the Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness (2024, B2B/Virgin): [sp]: A-
• Jason Anick/Jason Yeager: Sanctuary (2023 [2024], Sunnyside): [cd]: B+(***)
• The Attic & Eve Risser: La Grande Crue (2023 [2024], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
• David Bailis: Tree of Life (2024, Create or Destroy): [cd]: B+(**)
• Dharma Down: Owl Dreams (2023 [2024], Dharma Down): [cd]: B+(*)
• Etran De L'Aïr: 100% Saharan Guitar (2024, Sahel Sounds): [sp]: B+(***)
• Joel Futterman: Innervoice (2024, NoBusiness): [cd]: B+(***)
• Hinds: Viva Hinds (2024, Lucky Number): [sp]: A-
• Shawneci Icecold/Vernon Reid/Matthew Garrison & Grant Calvin Weston: Future Prime (2024, Underground45): [cd]: B+(***)
• J.U.S X Squadda B: 3rd Shift (2024, Bruiser Brigade): [sp]: B+(***)
• Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets: Indoor Safari (2024, Yep Roc): [sp]: B+(*)
• Michael McNeill: Barcode Poetry (2022 [2024], Infrasonic Press): [cd]: B+(***)
• Yuka Mito: How Deep Is the Ocean (2024, Nana Notes): [cd]: B
• Mavis Pan: Rising (2023 [2024], self-released): [cd]: B+(*)
• William Parker/Hugo Costa/Philipp Ernsting: Pulsar (2023 [2024], NoBusiness): [cd]: A-
• Pest Control: Year of the Pest (2024, Quality Control HQ, EP): [sp]: B+(***)
• Tyshawn Sorey Trio: The Suspectible Now (2024, Pi): [cd]: B+(***)
• Ben Waltzer: The Point (2023 [2024], Calligram): [cd]: B+(**)
• Immanuel Wilkins: Blues Blood (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Arthur Blythe Quartet: Live From Studio Rivbea: July 6, 1976 (1976 [2024], NoBusiness): [cd]: B+(***)
• Electro Throwdown: Sci-Fi Inter-Planetary Electro Attack on Planet Earth 1982-89 (1982-89 [2024], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(**)
• In the Beginning There Was Rhythm (1978-84 [2024], Soul Jazz): [sp]: B+(***)

Old music:

• George Adams-Don Pullen Quartet: Jazzbühne Berlin '88 (1988 [1991], Repertoire): [yt]: A-
• Ray Anderson: Harrisburg Half Life (1980 [1981], Moers Music): [yt]: B+(***)
• Black Arthur Blythe: Bush Baby (1977 [1978], Adelphi): [yt]: B+(***)
• Boombox 3: Early Independent Hip Hop, Electro and Disco Rap 1979-83 (1979-83 [2018], Soul Jazz, 2CD): [r]: B+(***)
• Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Musik 1972-83 (1972-83 [2010], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(*)
• Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Musik 1972-83 (1971-83 [2013], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(*)
• Lloyd McNeill: Elegia (1979 [2019], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(*)
• Punk 45: I'm a Mess! D-I-Y or Die! Art, Trash & Neon: Punk 45s in the UK 1977-78 (1977-78 [2022], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(**)
• Space Funk 2: Afro Futurist Electro Funk in Space 1976-84 (1976-84 [2023], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(**)
• Wiener Art Orchester: Tango From Obango (1979 [1980], Art): [yt]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Big Bambi: Compositions for Bass Guitar & Bassoon, Vol. I (ESP-Disk) [09-27]
• Steve Coleman and Five Elements: PolyTropos/Of Many Turns (Pi) [10-25]
• Day Dream: Duke & Strays Live: Works by Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn (Corner Store Jazz, 2CD) [11-08]
• David Friesen: A Light Shining Through (Origin) [11-22]
• Al Jarreau: Wow! Live at the Childe Harold (1976, Resonance) [12-06]
• Thollem McDonas: Infinite-Sum Game (ESP-Disk) [10-18]
• Reut Regev's R*Time: It's Now: R*Time Plays Doug Hammond (ESP-Disk) [11-15]
• Steve Smith and Vital Information: New Perspective (Drum Legacy) [02-07]
• Dave Stryker: Stryker With Strings Goes to the Movies (Strikezone) [01-10]
• Friso van Wijck: Friso van Wijck's Candy Container (TryTone) [11-01]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

File opened 2024-10-24 01:36 AM.

I've been trying to collect my thoughts and write my up Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Harris vs. Trump. I posted an early draft -- just the top 10 list -- on Monday afternoon at Notes on Everyday Life, then blanked out and didn't get to the second part ("Top 5 Reasons Electing Harris Won't Solve Our Problems") until Tuesday afternoon (and well into evening). I updated the NOEL draft that evening, and finally posted the file in the blog. That pushes this file out until Wednesday, and Music Week until Thursday (which still fits in October).

As of Tuesday evening, this week's collection is very hit-and-miss (100 links, 6023 words), typed up during odd breaks as I juggled my life between working on my birthday dinner, writing the endorsement, and struggling with my big remodeling project.

The endorsement could do with some editing, although my initial distribution of the link has thus far generated almost no comment (one long-time friend wrote back to disagree, having decided -- "even in a battleground state" -- to vote for Jill Stein). A year ago I still imagined writing a book that might have some small influence on the election. In some ways, this piece is my way of penance for my failure, but the more I got into it, the more I thought I had some worthwhile points to make. But now it's feeling like a complete waste of time.

The birthday dinner did feel like I accomplished something. The Burmese curries were each spectacular in their own way, the coconut rice nice enough, the ginger salad and vegetable sides also interesting, and the cake (not Burmese, but spice-and-oats) was an old favorite. I should follow it up with a second round of Burmese recipes before too long, especially now that I've secured the tea leaf salad ingredients.

Slow but tangible progress on the bedroom/closet remodel. Walls are painted now, leaving trim next. Paneling is up in closet, where I still have the ceiling and quite a bit of trim. [Wednesday morning now:] I've been meaning to go out back and polyurethane the trim boards, so I can cut them as needed, first to shore up the ceiling. But it's raining, so I'll give that pass for another day, and probably just work on this straggling post. Laura's report of morning news is full of gaffes by Biden and Hillary Clinton, who seem intent on redeeming the dead weight of their own cluelessness by imposing it on Harris. With "friends" like these, who needs . . . Dick Cheney?

Posting late Wednesday night, my usual rounds still incomplete. I'll decide tomorrow whether I'll add anything here, or simply move on to next week (which really has to post before election results start coming in). For now, I'm exhausted, and finding this whole process very frustrating.

Top story threads:

Israel:

• Mondoweiss:

  • [10-21] Day 381: Israel pummels northern Gaza amid intensifying extermination campaign: "Israel's conditions for a ceasefire with Lebanon include allowing the Israeli army to continue operating in Lebanese territory. Meanwhile, Israel steps up its extermination campaign in northern Gaza, targeting its last remaining hospitals."

  • [10-24] Day 384: Israel continues to ethnically cleanse northern Gaza: "The ongoing extermination campaign in northern Gaza is displacing Palestinians from shelters as dozens of residents have been abducted by the Israeli army. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut's southern Dahiya district."

  • [10-28] Day 388: Ongoing Israeli assault rips through northern Gaza, shuts down Kamal Adwan Hospital: "The last functioning hospital in north Gaza is forced out of service as Israeli forces continue to besiege and bomb Jabalia and Beit Lahia. In southern Lebanon, Israeli forces continue to take heavy losses."

• Ruwaida Kamal Amer/Ibtisam Mahdi: [10-24] For Gaza's schoolchildren, another year of destruction, loss, and uncertainty.

• Tareq S Hajjaj: [10-25] Survivors of north Gaza invasion report Israeli 'extermination' campaign: "Survivors of the ongoing Israeli extermination campaign in north Gaza describe how the Israeli army is separating mothers from children before forcing them south, executing civilians in ditches, and directly targeting hospitals and medical staff."

• Shatha Hanaysha: [10-25] 'Our freedom is close': why these young Palestinian men choose armed resistance: "I met resistance fighters from the Tulkarem Brigade for an interview in the alleyways of Tulkarem refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. They talked about why they fight against Israel, and what their dreams are for the future." This is disturbing. I find it impossible to feel solidarity or even sympathy with people who would fight back against Israel, even if purely out of self-defense. But it is understandable, and has long been predicted, every time Israel has renewed its war on Gaza (going back at least to 1951): virtually all people, when oppressed, will fight back. That they should do so, why and why, is mostly a function of the people who are driving them to such desperate measures. We'd see less of this if only we were clear on who is responsible for setting the conditions that make such rebellion seem like the only recourse, especially if we made it clear that we'll hold those who control an area as the sole ones responsible for the rebellions they provoke. Sure, I can think of some cases where control was nebulous and/or revolts were fueled by external forces, but that is not the case with Israel in Gaza. Israel is solely responsible for this genocide. And if armed resistance only accelerates it, that is solely because Israel wants it that way.

• Gideon Levy: [10-25] Beatings, humiliation and torture: The IDF's night of terror at a Palestinian refugee camp: "Israeli soldiers abused people during a raid on a remote refugee camp in the territories. During their violent rampage, the troops detained 30 inhabitants, of whom 27 were released the next day."

• Mohammed R Mhawish/Ola Al Asi/Ibrahim Mohammad: [10-23] Inside the siege of northern Gaza, where 'death waits around every corner': "Limbs scattered on the streets, shelters set ablaze, hundreds trapped inside hospitals: Palestinians detail the apocalyptic scenes of Israel's latest campaign."

• Qassam Muaddi:

  • [10-24] Israeli army continues attempts to empty northern Gaza: "Following the Israeli army's claim to have displaced 20,000 Palestinians from Jabalia, local sources tell Mondoweiss that most of the displaced have relocated to other places in northern Gaza."

  • [10-29] Why Israel outlawed UNRWA, and what it could mean for Palestinian refugees: "Israel has banned the work of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in Israel and East Jerusalem. The move could have a major impact on the agency's life-saving work and is part of an ongoing campaign to erase Palestinian refugee rights."

• Jonathan Ofir: [10-28] Israeli journalists join the live-streamed genocide: "A mainstream Israeli journalist recently blew up a house in Lebanon as part of a news report while embedded with the military. The broadcast shows how mainstream genocidal activity has become in Israeli society."

• Meron Rapoport:

  • [10-30] With or without Sinwar, Netanyahu has no interest in ending the war.

  • [10-23] Conversing as unequals: Jewish-Palestinian partnership at a crossroads: "Awni Al-Mashni and I have spent years meeting with Israelis and Palestinians across the land to discuss visions for the future. Do we still have answers?"

• Christiaan Triebert/Riley Mellen/Alexander Cardia: [10-30] Israel Demolished Hundreds of Buildings in Southern Lebanon, Videos and Satellite Images Show: "At least 1,085 buildings have been destroyed or badly damaged since Israel's invasion targeting the Hezbollah militia, including many in controlled demolitions, a New York Times analysis shows." Same tactics, reflecting the same threats and intentions Israel is using on Gaza, except that you can't even pretend to be responding to an attack like Oct. 7. Hezbollah is being targeted simply because it exists, and Lebanon is being targeted because Israelis make no distinction between the "militants" they "defend" against and any other person who lives in their vicinity. The numbers in Lebanon may not amount to genocide yet, but that's the model that Israel is following.

• Oren Ziv: [10-22] 'Copy-paste the West Bank to Gaza': Hundreds join Gaza resettlement event: "In a closed military zone near Gaza, Israeli settlers, ministers, and MKs called to ethnically cleanse and annex the Strip -- an idea that is growing mainstream."

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

• Yaniv Cogan/Jeremy Scahill: [10-21] The Israeli-American businessman pitching a $200 million plan to deploy mercenaries to Gaza: "Moti Kahana says he's talking to the Israeli government about creating a pilot program for 'gated communities' controlled by private US security forces." By the way, the authors also (separately) wrote:

  • Yaniv Cogan: [10-06] Blinken approved policy to bomb aid trucks, Israeli cabinet members suggest.

  • Jeremy Scahill/Murtaza Hussain/Sharif Abdel Kouddous: [09-18] Israel's new campaign of "terrorism warfare" across Lebanon.

  • Ryan Grim/Murtaza Hussain: [10-29] Project 2025 creators have a plan to 'dismantle' pro-Palestine movement: "If Donald Trump wins next week, the Heritage Foundation has prepared a roadmap for him to crush dissent."

    The plan, dubbed "Project Esther," casts pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. as members of a global conspiracy aligned with designated terrorist organizations. As part of a so-called "Hamas Support Network," these protesters receive "indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal -- the destruction of capitalism and democracy," Project Esther's authors allege.

    This conspiratorial framing is part of a legal strategy to suppress speech favorable to Palestinians or critical of the U.S.-Israel relationship, by employing counterterrorism laws to suppress what would otherwise be protected speech . . .

    To achieve its goals, Project Esther proposes the use of counterterrorism and hate speech laws, as well as immigration measures, including the deportation of students and other individuals in the United States on foreign visas for taking part in pro-Palestinian activities. It also advocates deploying the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law placing disclosure obligations on parties representing foreign interests, against organizations that the report's authors imply are funded and directed from abroad.

    In addition, the document also suggests using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to help construct prosecutions against individuals and organizations in the movement. The RICO act was originally created to fight organized crime in the U.S., and particularly mafia groups.

    It occurs to me that the same laws and tactics could be used to counter Israeli political influence -- that that anyone would try that -- and that the audit trail would be much more interesting.

• Adrian Filut: [10-24] From Iron Dome to F-15s: US provides 70% of Israel's war costs.

• Tariq Kenney-Shawa: [10-29] Why the Democrats were Israel's perfect partners in genocide: "By masking support for Israel with hollow humanitarian gestures and empathy for Palestinians have diluted pressure to end the war."

• Akela Lacy: [10-24] How does AIPAC shape Washington? We tracked every dollar. "The Intercept followed AIPAC's money trail to reveal how its political spending impacts the balance of power in Congress."

• Mitchell Plitnick: [10-25] US efforts to entice Israel into minimizing its attack on Iran are only raising the chances for regional war: "The Biden administration is showering Israel with military aid and support to persuade it not to hit Iran's energy sector, but this will only increase Israeli impunity and push the region closer to war."

• Azadeh Shahshahahani/Sofía Verónica Montez: [02-26] Complicity in genocide -- the case against the Biden administration: "Israel's mass bombardment of civilians in Gaza is being facilitated, aided and abetted by the United States government." Older article I just noticed, but figured I'd note anyway. Reminds me that the only proper response to the "genocide" charge is to stop doing it. That at least enables the argument that you never meant the complete annihilation of everyone, because you stopped and left some (most?) target people still alive. Needless to say, the argument becomes less persuasive over time, where you've repeatedly missed opportunities to say this is enough, "we've made our point."

• Richard Silverstein:

  • [10-04] 32 Iranian missiles struck Israel's major air base.

  • [10-10] Teetering on the brink: US proposes attacking Iran.

  • [10-12] Yom Kippur: Atoning for genocide: "Let's make something clear from the start: Jews don't have to apologize for Israel's sins. Israelis must do that."

  • [10-21] Shin Bet alleges Iran spy network active for two years.

• Ishaan Tharoor:

  • [10-25] Is Israel carrying out de facto ethnic cleansing? "A pro-settlement Israeli group and some Israeli lawmakers gathered a couple miles from northern Gaza's blasted neighborhoods to rally around settling Gaza."

  • [10-28] The world beyond the election: Middle East in turmoil: "Whoever takes office in January will face a region being reshaped by an emboldened Israel and the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia."

  • [10-30] The world beyond the election: So much for democracy vs. autocracy. The Biden framing was mostly horseshit, mostly because America has never cared whether other countries practiced democracy, not least because we don't do a good job of it ourselves, and are certainly willing to throw it out the window if the polls look unfavorable. But also I suppose it was a subtle dig at Trump, who's always been Team Autocracy. That the ardor seems to have faded is less a change of view than acknowledgment that it hasn't worked so well. Then there is this line: "Biden once framed the successful defense of Ukraine as a rejection of a world 'where might makes right.'" But what is the US "defense" of Ukraine but an exercise in might making right? And if that case isn't clear cut enough for you, what else can you make of Israel?

Israel vs. world opinion:

• Ahmed Alqarout: [10-29] How Israel is trying to beat the 'axis of resistance' by dominating the regional supply chain: "Israel has been able to insulate itself from the effects of the economic blockade imposed by the 'Axis of Resistance' through supply chain warfare in the Middle East and the broader region."

• Michael Arria:

  • [10-29] 'Thousands of people will die': Gaza doctors describe impact of Israel barring medical NGOs: "Israel has barred at least six international medical NGOs that had been providing crucial support to Gaza's decimated healthcare sector. Doctors in the banned groups say the move could result in thousands of additional deaths."

  • [10-22] The Shift: Poll shows Trump with slight edge among Arab American voters: The poll was from Arab News/YouGov. The split was 45% for Trump, 43% for Harris, and 4% for Jill Stein. Of chose, 29% chose Gaza as their biggest issue. Both candidates got 38% when asked "who would be better for the Middle East," but respondents thought Trump was more likely "to successfully resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict" (39% to 33%). A recent poll from Arab American Institute produced similar results. For more on recent Arab-American polling:

  • Richard Eskrow: [10-18] Dems are afraid Gaza will cost them the election. They're not afraid enough.

  Many people are critics of Harris for not taking a strong stand against Israel's genocide, but Arria relays a case where Israel's supporters are attacking Harris for not being supportive enough:

  It seems pretty clear that Harris was referring to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and not the student's reference to genocide, but this didn't stop pro-Israel voices from attacking the Vice President.

  "A very dangerous precedent," tweeted former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren. "I was disturbed to view the video in which Vice President Kamala Harris appears to confirm the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This is the first time that the White House has been linked to a libel which threatens Israel's legitimacy and security. I call on the U.S. administration to issue an immediate and complete denial."

  Just goes to show that Israel's front-line hasbara warriors realize that their arguments cannot withstand the admission of any doubt or ambiguity.

  • [10-24] The Shift: More campus crackdowns, DOJ lawyers call for Israel investigation: "Since the fall semester began last month we have seen schools implement a new round of repressive measures to crack down on Palestine activism."

  • [10-29] The Shift: Trump seeks to capitalize on voter frustration with Harris over Gaza: "The Trump campaign is clearly taking steps to capitalize on voters' frustration over Gaza. While Kamala Harris was getting booed by protesters in Michigan, Trump was also in the state making a play to Arab and Muslim voters."

  • [10-18] Samidoun's coordinator speaks out on the US and Canada's targeting of the group: Interview with Mohammed Khatib, European coordinator for the "Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network" group, accused of raising funds for the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).

• Ramzy Baroud: [10-25] Israel's biblical wars of 'self defense': the myth of the 'seven war fronts'.

• Sam Biddle: [10-21] Meta's Israel policy chief tried to suppress pro-Palestinian Instagram posts: "Jordana Cutler, Meta's policy chief for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, repeatedly flagged for censorship posts by Students for Justice in Palestine."

• Shane Burley: [10-01] US Jewish institutions are purging their staffs of anti-Zionists: "A months-long investigation found even the smallest hints of dissent are often met with unemployment."

• Sharaiz Chaudhry: [10-26] Generating consent for genocide: The BBC's complicity in Israel's crimes in Palestine and Lebanon: "The BBC is deceiving the British public and using its position to manufacture consent for Israel's genocidal assault in Palestine and Lebanon."

• Roy Eidelson: [10-23] The American Psychological Association is abandoning its commitment to human rights by refusing to speak out on Palestine: "The American Psychological Association claims to 'prioritize human rights advocacy,' but if its leaders want to truly honor that commitment they must recognize and address the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza today."

• Melvin Goodman: [10-28] The latest absurdities from the columnists of the New York Times: On Thomas L Friedman and Bret Stephens.

• Binoy Kampmark: [10-28] Crippling UNRWA: The Knesset's collective punishment of Palestinians.

• Ben Lorber: [09-05] The right is increasingly exploiting the horror of genocide: "Right-wing operatives are channeling the genocide in Gaza into mainstream antisemitism." This was bound to happen, although it's been slow to emerge, as most right-wing antisemites are actually big fans of Israel, and they're not especially sensitive to human rights abuses of any sort. [PS: On closer examination, I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion: that right-wingers were feigning horror at genocide to whip up antisemitic sentiments. Turns out this is mostly about a group called NatCon, where antisemitism claims the mantle of "Judeo-Christian nationalism" and supports genocide to the hilt.]

• Joseph Willits: [10-16] How Starmer's Labour government has enabled Israel's genocide.

Election notes:

• Charlotte Alter: [10-25] Some Democrats believe this might be an abortion election after all.

• Aaron Blake: [10-28] Can independent Dan Osborn win in Nebraska? And would it matter? "A new poll adds evidence that we could see a historic result in the Senate race, but it probably won't affect the chamber's majority."

• Julia Conley: [10-29] 'This is just the traceable money': $2 billion pumped into 2024 election by billionaire families.

• Bob Dreyfuss: [10-29] Pennsylvania's undecideds: "The 2024 election will likely turn on the Democrats' ground game."

• John Feffer: [10-23] Billionaires vs democracy: "The rich are trying to buy elections all over the world and consign democracy to the trash bin of history."

• Sarah Jones: [10-29] How did this become a gender-gap election: "Trump vs. Harris brings America's gendered political preferences into sharper focus."

• Tony Karon: [10-23] Voting in a time of genocide.

• Celinda Lake/Amanda Iovino: [10-30] A Democratic and a Republican pollster agree: This is the fault line that decides the election: Teases you with the "gender gap," the chart showing Trump +8 with men, Harris +9 with women (gap of 17 points), then offers you the 29-point gap by education, which shows Trump +10 for non-college, Harris +19 for college. Of course, both factors compound with a 43-point gap between non-college men (Trump +16) and college women (Harris +27), but non-college women still prefer Trump (+4) while college men go with Harris (+7).

• Nicole Narea: [10-27] What if Jill Stein or RFK Jr. decides the election? That you could even ask such a question shows that you understand nothing about third-party candidates, or at least their voters. Anyone who thinks that there is meaningful difference between the two major party candidates will vote for one or the other. Those who don't may register that opinion by voting for someone else, or they may just skip the whole process -- third-party voters are preferable, because at least they're showing respect for the process, just not for the two parties and their candidates. Stein and Kennedy decided to throw their names into the hat, but that's about it. Perhaps they made that decision hoping to spoil the election -- that's certainly the only message popular media has any interest in examining. But the voters' decisions are purely negative. Neither party has the right to claim third-party votes as rightfully theirs, because those votes were clear rejections of both parties.

  I've made what I felt was a pretty strong case that the two-party split really matters this year, and that one should vote for Harris vs. Trump. But the first commenter I got back disagreed and reiterated his decision to vote for Stein. I respect that.

• John Quiggin: [10-28] The end of US democracy: a flowchart:

  Go to the article for the chart, but each node has an assigned probability, which of course is just a wild guess, but this allows the possibility of adding them up:

  If the US were remotely normal, every entry on the left-hand edge ought to be equal to 1. Harris should be a sure winner, Trump shouldn't find any supporters for a coup, the MAGA Republicans in Congress should be unelectable and the moderate program proposed by Harris should be successful enough that Trumpism would be defeated forever.

  But that's not the case. There are two end points in which US democracy survives, with a total probability (excessively precise) of 0.46, and one where it ends, with a probability of 0.54. By replacing my probabilities at the decision nodes with your own, you can come up with your own numbers. Or you may feel that I've missed crucial pathways. . . .

  Note: Any Thälmann-style comments (such as "After Trump, us" or "Dems are social fascists anyway") will be blocked and deleted.

  The key here is "remotely normal, so that's the part you still have to puzzle out, and that's where the real problems and solutions lie.

• Catherine Rampell/Youyou Zhou: [10-22] Voters prefer Harris's agenda to Trump's -- they just don't realize it. Take our quiz." I hate these pieces, not least because they deliberately try to screw you over with misleading questions, but since I'm citing it, I figure I might as well score myself. The verdict was: "you supported 1 of Trump's policies and 4 of Harris's policies." The one "Trump proposal" I supported was: "Funding free online classes with money taken from private university endowments through taxes, fines, and lawsuits." I can see why Harris wouldn't have proposed that. I'm not wild about the funding mechanism, but private university endowments are a huge tax shelter that doesn't offer much public interest value, so I could see taxing them down. On the other hand, "free online classes" is a no-brainer. I think that continuing adult education is drastically underserved in America, and online classes would be a particularly cost-effective way of helping out. (I also favor free in-person classes, and I would fund it all from general funds, but I wasn't asked that.) The only thing that distinguishes this as a "Trump proposal" is that it's a bit harebrained. It's also a proposal that Trump will never lift a finger to implement, nor could he pass through his caucus.

• Eugene Robinson: The double standard for Harris and Trump has reached a breaking point: "One candidate can rant about gibberish while the other has to be perfect."

• Shaghayegh Chris Rostampour: [10-14] Why aren't Harris and Trump talking about nuclear weapons? "The threat is real and at times the call is coming from inside our own house." This doesn't really belong under "election," because, as noted, it's not something being contested, or even given much thought.

• David Sirota: How the 2024 election is normalizing corruption.

• David Wallace-Wells: [10-30] The election looks li ke an intramural squabble between billionaires: That, of course, is what you get when you reduce politics to a game of raising unlimited money.

• Endorsements:

  • Wajahat Ali: [10-29] Yes, I think Democrats are complicit in genocide. But Trump would be far worse: "There is simply no moral argument for allowing the former president to win in the name of opposing genocide."

    Donald Trump will be genocidal and a fascist. On Gaza, Trump promised he would let Israel "finish the job." That means fulfilling his mega-donor Miriam Adelson's wish of annexing the West Bank and standing pat as Israel moves to occupy northern Gaza on the graveyard of Palestinians. There's a reason why Israel's extremist national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, wants Trump to win and says he will be better for Israel. . . .

    With Harris and Democrats, there is an opening for Americans to organize, push, and pressure her administration to halt Israel's genocide and pursue progressive healthcare and economic policies. Democratic allies include Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, labor organizations and communities of color who remain committed to social justice, equity and peace. With the Republicans and Trump, no such allies exist. There's simply a fascist and a white Christian nationalist regime in waiting.

  • Matt Bai: [10-30] George W Bush is running out of time: "He should take this chance to get right with history, because history will certainly be hard on him." I've long suspected that Bush had a streak of plain human decency that he managed to suppress during his eight years as president. He ended that streak in disgrace, which come to think of it, is also how he started it, with many even worse moments along the way. But at least he hasn't compounded that disgrace, as most other ex-presidents have done. His withdrawal and silence is really all the recognition we need (or can hope for) that he is at least somewhat cognizant of his failures. Doing anything else at this point would only compromise his last shred of dignity.

    By the way, it's easy enough to see Dick Cheney's endorsement as nothing more than a favor to his daughter, who might still hope to continue her political career -- not as a candidate but in some other capacity -- by endearing herself to Harris. While Cheney is the most certifiably evil character in recent American politics, he's always had a soft spot for the women in his life.

  • Ben Burgis: [10-25] There's no pride in a Dick Cheney endorsement.

  • Jackie Calmes: [10-20] Top 10 reasons not to vote for Donald Trump: Plus: "Finally, the bonus, a positive reason to vote Harris. She's not only among the most experienced applicants for the job ever, but also: She's not Trump."

  • The Guardian: [10-25] The Guardian view on the US election and foreign policy: the world can't afford Trump again.

  • William Lewis: [10-25] On political endorsement: The Washington Post, presumably as directed by billionaire owner Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse any presidential candidate this year, breaking with a practice that they've followed since 1976, even after it's been reported that they had a Harris endorsement ready to go. The publisher tries to explain this decision here. I'm not terribly bothered by this, probably because I deeply distrust the big money media anyway, especially their pretensions of independence. The Post, like the New York Times, goes out of their way to "balance" their proper news reporting -- never free from their own deep seated biases -- with right-wing "opinion" writers. However, many readers recognize Trump as not just a political opportunist but as such a perversely malign presence that they think he merits more rigorous scrutiny: that every mention that does not put his statements in historical context runs the risk of sanitizing and legitimizing ideas that most people upon reflection should find truly appalling. So this particular non-endorsement has elicited an interesting set of reactions, starting with economic sanctions:

    • Isaac Chotiner: [10-27] Marty Baron on the Washington Post's "spineless" endorsement decision: "The former executive editor discusses his relationship with the newspaper's owner, Jeff Bezos, who was reportedly behind the last-minute call to kill an editorial supporting Kamala Harris."

    • Charles R Davis: [10-25] "This is cowardice": Ex-editor blasts Washington Post after Jeff Bezos blocks Harris endorsement.

    • Kevin T Dugan: [10-30] What Blue Origin stands to gain after Jeff Bezos muzzled the Washington Post: "The Amazon owner claims he didn't pull an endorsement of Kamala Harris to aid his rocket company."

    • Griffin Eckstein: [10-24] Los Angeles Times editor resigns after billionaire owner blocks Harris endorsement: "Mariel Garza said the owner's decision to cut Harris endorsement 'undermines the integrity of the editorial board.'"

    • Eszter Hargittai: [10-29] Washington Post cancellations.

    • Dana Milbank: [10-27] Why I'm not quitting the Post: "And why I hope you don't, either."

    • Alexandra Petri: [10-26] It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president: "Isn't this what a newspaper is supposed to do?"

    • David Remnick: [10-30] Standing up to Trump: "Jeff Bezos endorsed a Trump-era slogan -- 'Democracy Dies in Darkness' for his newspaper, the Washington Post. Why wouldn't he let it endorse a candidate?"

    • Isaac Stanley-Becker/Aaron C Davis/Josh Dawsey/Christian Davenport: [10-30] For Jeff Bezos and his businesses, Washington has become more important: "Executives at companies founded by the billionaire Post owner have sought contact with trump. He argues he didn't end presidential endorsements out of self-interest."

    • Margaret Sullivan: [10-25] The Washington Post and LA Times refused to endorse a candidate. Why? Or more pointedly, why now?

    • Siva Vaidhyanathan: [10-29] The Washington Post is a reminder of the dangers of billionaire ownership.

  • J Michael Luttig: [10-29] My fellow Republicans, it's time to say enough with Trump. Also cites his previous endorsement from August.

  • Phil Mattingly: [10-23] 23 Nobel Prize-winning economists call Harris' economic plan 'vastly superior' to Trump's.

  • The New Yorker: Harris for President: "The Vice-President has displayed the basic values and political skills that would enable her to help end, once and for all, a poisonous era defined by Donald Trump."

  • Hamilton Nolan: [09-20] The weird and stupid Teamsters non-endorsement fiasco: "Refusing to endorse a presidential candidate will do nothing to stop Trump and the GOP's war on workers."

  • The Observer: [10-26] Americans who believe in democracy have no choice but to vote for Harris

  • Edith Olmsted: [10-25] "Extreme danger": Harris earns a stunning endorsement over Trump: "Kamala Harris has earned an eleventh-hour show of support from Palestinian,Arab, and Muslim community leaders." I cite their statement down in the "chatter" section.

  • Rick Perlstein: [10-23] Science is political: "For only the second time in its 179-year history, Scientific American has endorsed a candidate for president: Kamala Harris.

  • April Rubin:

    • [10-23] 23 Nobel prize-winning economists back Harris' economic proposals. This is up from [06-25], when 16 Nobel economists see a Trump inflation bomb.

    • [10-24] 82 Nobel-prize recipients in science fields endorse Harris.

  • Bernie Sanders: [10-30] How can I vote for Kamala Harris if she supports Israel's war? Here's my answer: "Trump says Netanyahu is doing a good job and Biden is holding him back. Even on this issue, Trump is worse."

  • Catherine Shoard: [10-30] Arnold Schwarzenegger endorses Kamala Harris: 'I will always be an American before I am a Republican': "The former Republican governor said that he was backing the Democrat because a Trump victory would mean 'four more years of bullshit.'"

  • Bret Stephens: [10-29] A conservative case against Trump: This one gives me no comfort. He's in the running for worst right-wing pundit in America, and much of his rationale centers on his understanding that Trump is less reliable than Harris when it comes to supporting war and genocide: among other things, he worries that "allow Putin to succeed in Ukraine, and Israel's threats from Russia's allies in Iran, Syria and Yemen will multiply."

  • Wikipedia: I ran this last week, but the lists keep growing:

    • List of Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign endorsements.

    • List of Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign endorsements.

    • News media endorsements in the 2024 United States presidential election.

Trump:

• Trump's Madison Square Garden spectacle:

  • Jamelle Bouie: [10-29] Trump is less confident than he says. His rally at Madison Square Garden proves it.

  • Matt Ford: [10-29] The Madison Square Garden rally is a vision of a second Trump term: "There's no clearer picture of a presidency than the people with whom a would-be president chooses to associate."

  • Melissa Gira Grant: [10-29] Trump wasn't kidding with that fascist rally. Just ask his ICE chief. "While Stephen Miller and Tony Hinchcliffe were hurling racist tropes at Madison Square Garden, former ICE acting Director Tom Homan was on CBS explaining what the actual policies of mass deportation would look like."

  • Sarah Jones: [10-28] Why did Trump's MSG rally call Kamala Harris the antichrist? "For his Christian-right supporters, the election will be fought as spiritual warfare."

  • Branko Marcetic: [10-28] Trump's hateful rally has no real answer from Democrats.

  • Christian Paz: [10-29] Trump's Madison Square Garden rally showed how racism is the beating heart of election denial: "Trump's lies about electoral fraud rest on an argument about nonwhite people."

  • H Scott Prosterman: [10-30] Echoes and parallels from 1939 -- Trump's Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden: I wonder if part of the point wasn't do evoke comparisons like this, figuring that, like most historically informed attacks on Trump, they'll only solidify his support?

  • Greg Sargent: [10-28] Trump's ugly racist rally finally unmasks his real closing argument: "The Madison Square Garden rally didn't devolve into a hate fest. The hate fest was the point all along."

  • Alex Shephard: [10-28] It's not just Trump we have to fear anymore: "Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden was a parade of foot soldiers in a hateful movement that has become even bigger than the man who founded it."

  • V (formerly Eve Ensler): [10-29] Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden: the ultimate daddy projection screen.

  • Jimmy Kimmel Live:

    • Trump's nuttiest rally of all time.

    • For Republicans we love: Post-MSG, a "special monologue" trying to reason with Republicans.

• Zack Beauchamp: [10-31] Inside Trump's ominous plan to turn civil rights law against vulnerable Americans. Late-breaking but important article.

• Jasper Craven: Trump's cronies threw the VA into chaos. Millions of veterans' lives are on the line again.

• David French: [10-27] Four lessons from nine years of being 'Never Trump': His section heads:

  • Community is more powerful than ideology.
  • We don't know our true values until they're tested.
  • Hatred is the prime motivating force in our politics.
  • Finally, trust is tribal.

• Susan B Glasser: [10-18] How Republican billionaires learned to love Trump again: "The former President has been fighting to win back his wealthiest donors, while actively courting new ones -- what do they expect to get in return?"

  Trump's effort to win back wealthy donors received its biggest boost on the evening of May 30th, when he was convicted in Manhattan on thirty-four criminal counts related to his efforts to conceal hush-money payments to the former adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. After the verdict, Trump walked out to the cameras in the courthouse and denounced the case brought against him as "rigged" and a "disgrace." Then he departed in a motorcade of black Suburbans. He was headed uptown for an exclusive fund-raising dinner, at the Fifth Avenue apartment of the Florida sugar magnate José (Pepe) Fanjul. . . .

  Trump was seated at the head table, between Fanjul -- a major Republican donor going back to the early nineties -- and Stephen Schwarzman, the C.E.O. of Blackstone, the world's largest private-equity fund, who had endorsed Trump the previous Friday. Securing the support of Schwarzman was a coup for the Trump campaign. . . .

  Trump was fund-raising off his conviction with small-dollar donors as well; his campaign, which portrayed him as the victim of a politicized justice system, brought in nearly $53 million in the twenty-four hours after the verdict. Several megadonors who had held back from endorsing Trump announced that they were now supporting him, including Miriam Adelson, the widow of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson; the Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, who said that the case against Trump was a sign of America turning into a "Banana Republic"; and the venture capitalist Shaun Maguire, who, less than an hour after the verdict, posted on X that he was donating $300,000 to Trump, calling the prosecution a "radicalizing experience." A day later, Timothy Mellon, the banking-family scion, wrote a $50-million check to the Make America Great Again super PAC.

  Many more names and dollar amounts follow.

• Margaret Hartmann: [10-29] Melania Trump plays normal political wife for one week only: "From appearing at Donald Trump's racist MSG rally to insisting he's 'not Hitler' on Fox News, Melania is now conspicuously present."

• Doug Henwood: [10-30] Trumponomics: "What kind of economic policy could we expect from a second Trump term?" A fairly obvious assignment for one of our more available left-wing economists, but he comes up with surprisingly little here, beyond income tax cuts and tariffs -- much-advertised themes that are unlikely to amount to very much. I suspect this is mostly because, despite the obvious importance of the economy, there isn't much of a partisan divide on how to run it. Trump would be harder on workers (especially on unions), and softer on polluters and all manner of frauds, but those are just relative shifts of focus. He would also shift public spending away from things that might be useful, like infrastructure, to "defense," including his "beautiful wall."

• Michael Isikoff: [10-28] Trump campaign worker blows whistle on 'grift' and bugging plot: "A bombshell email claims millions were funneled from campaign to 'overcharging' firms -- and some went to a top Kamala Harris donor."

• Robert Kuttner: [10-30] Why so much hate? "Trump has tapped into an undercurrent of crude hatred and encouraged his supporters to express it. Where does all this hate come from?"

• Steven Levitsky/Daniel Ziblatt: [] There are four anti-Trump pathways we failed to take. There is a fifth. Authors of two books that have many liberal fans -- How Democracies Die (2018), and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (2023) -- but never struck me as worth investigating, partly because their interest in democracy seems more concerned with formal elegance than with making government serve the people. The fifth path, when various legal schemes fail, is "societal mobilization" -- isn't that what we used to call "revolution"? The authors have written several "guest essays" over the years, including:

  • [2023-09-08] Democracy's assassins always have accomplices.

• Nick Licata: [10-29] Trump's playbook to win regardless of election night results.

• Nicholas Liu: [10-30] RFK Jr. claims Trump promised him "control" of CDC and federal health care agencies.

  • Andrew Prokop: [10-31] Trump really could empower RFK Jr. to wreck public health: "Even if Kennedy can't get Senate confirmation, he could still wield vast influence if Trump wins."

• Amanda Marcotte:

  • [10-25] "Daddy's home": Tucker Carlson's bizarre troll distills Trump's false promise to male voters: 'Trump wants dudes to believe he can bring women to heel, but instead, he'll leave men sadder and lonelier."

  • [10-28] Trump campaign's obsessive hate may not boost him, but it will cause long-term damage: "A deluge of swing state ads suggest trans people cannot co-exist peacefully with cis people."

  • [10-28] Elon Musk's "illegal" past doesn't feel like hypocrisy to MAGA -- Trump's hate rally in NYC shows why.

  • [10-30] In dual rallies, Trump celebrated fascism, but Kamala exposed its true face: "MAGA made a petulant case for white supremacy, but on the site of January 6, Harris reminded voters of its violence."

• Nicole Narea: [10-29] Would Trump's mass deportation plan actually work? "Here's what history tells us." Related here:

  • Christian Paz: [10-25] Polls say voters back "mass deportation." That's misleading. "Americans' opinions on immigration are more complicated than any one question can capture."

• The New Republic: [10-21] The 100 worst things Trump has done since descending that escalator: "Some were just embarrassing. Many were horrific. All of them should disqualify him from another four years in the White House."

• Timothy Noah:

  • [10-25] The influential men who disdain Trump -- but won't endorse Harris: "History will remember that Fraidy-Cats like Jeff Bezos and Mitt Romney went AWOL during their country's hour of need." Part one, followed by:

  • [10-29] The swelling ranks of influential men knuckling under to Trump: "More on the big shots -- from Mark Zuckerberg to Sean O'Brien -- who Trump has successfully intimidated into obeisance."

• Paige Oamek: [10-15] Trump's campaign manager has raked in an insane amount of money: "How in the world did Chris LaCivita make this much money from a campaign?"

• Rick Perlstein: [10-30] What will you do? "Life-changing choices we may be forced to make if Donald Trump wins."

• Molly Redden/Andy Kroll/Nick Surgey: [10-29] Inside a key MAGA leader's plans for a new Trump agenda: "Key Trump adviser says a Trump administration will seek to make civil servants miserable in their jobs." Spotlight here on Russell Vought, "former acting director of the Office of Management and Budget." Also on Vought:

  • Jake Johnson: [10-28] Leaked videos reveal Project 2025 architect's plan for far-right 'shadow' government: "Russell Vought, who served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump's first term, said he wants to inflict 'trauma' on career civil servants and bulldoze opponents of the Republican nominee."

• James Risen:

  • [10-25] Mainstream media was afraid to compare Trump to Hitler. Now the press has no excuse. "Statements by John Kelly, Trump's former chief of staff, have made it nearly impossible for the media to avoid Hitler comparisons." Kelly's comments did pop up among the late show comics, but I wouldn't expect much more.

  • [10-22] Americans need a closing argument against Trump: "Too many Americans seem to be ignoring the risks that another Trump presidency would pose to the US. This is a warning to them." Included here because the author casually mentions: "Trump is a fascist who wants to overthrow the United States' democratic system of government." That's under the first section here, which is just one of several:

    1. Threat to democracy
    2. Imprison political opponents
    3. Eliminate reproductive rights
    4. Concentration camps and mass deportations for immigrants
    5. Create a theocracy
    6. Increase censorship and destroy the media
    7. A puppet for Putin
    8. Dictator for life

    Actually, I don't see many of these things happening, even if Republicans take Congress, and the last two are total canards. No one aspires to be a puppet, but aside from that, the rest are at least things Trump might think of and wish for. What separates Trump from the classic fascists has less to do with thought and desire than with checks and balances that make it hard for any president to get much of anything done. Still, a bad president can do a lot of damage, and any would-be fascist is certain to be a very bad president. As Trump has already proven, so we really shouldn't have to relitigate this.

  • [10-03] The reason Netanyahu and Putin both want a Trump victory: "Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu both want Donald Trump to win so they can prolong and intensify their brutal wars."

• Asawin Suebsaeng/Tim Dickinson: 'American death squads': Inside Trump's push to make police more violent.

• Sean Wilentz: Trump's plot against America: "A leading historian looks back at Philip Roth's novel and how it perfectly predicts the rise of Trump and his willing collaborators."

• No More Mr. Nice Blog:

  • [10-28] It's world-historical fascism, but it's also ordinary white-guy bigotry.

    Did yesterday's rally seem like the work of an organized, dangerous fascist party? Yes -- but the rally's rhetoric also seemed like ordinary casual conversation among bigoted white men when they think no one can hear them. Remember the cops who beat Rodney King in 1991 and sent messages to one another describing Black citizens involved in a domestic dispute as being "right out of 'Gorillas in the Mist'"? Remember the police official responsible for investigating workplace harassment in New York City being fired in 2021 after it was revealed that he'd written racist posts in a police discussion group called the Rant? . . .

    This is how bigoted men talk. Among cops, it reinforces a sense of grievance that often leads to brutality. It'll do the same thing among Trumpers if they win -- and, to a lesser extent, if they lose. This is a rising fascist movement, but it's built on ordinary hatreds that aren't new and that predate Trump's political career.

  • [10-24] Fascism and other matters.

  • [20-21] Donald Trump, relatable fuckup?

    I think young men find Trump's campaign-trail lapses relatable. It's not just that they might really believe Haitians in America are eating people's pets, or might enjoy Trump's smutty anecdotes. I think they also might notice that Trump is being accused of campaign incompetence or dementia -- and that endears him more to them.

    After all, many of them were diagnosed with ADHD because they couldn't sit still in school or stop disrupting class. They might not like Trump's taste in music, but they can relate to someone who shows up and just doesn't feel like doing the work.

    They appreciate the way Trump suggests that he not only can solve all the world's problems, but can do it quickly and easily -- he conveys a sense that he can succeed at many things without doing any hard work. That's what they want to do!Why are young men attending college at lower rates than young women? Aren't they attending the same schools as their sisters? Being good in school has always been seen as weird and unmanly by most Americans, and I think that mindset is having a greater and greater impact on young men's choices. Boys with good grades are seen as weird losers and not very masculine -- they're like girls, who are allowed to be good in school. It's much cooler to be an amusing fuckup.

    When we express horror at Trump's latest baffling act on the campaign trail, I think we sound, to these young men, like annoyingly responsible scolds. Obviously, they like Trump's offensive humor because they like offending people, but they also relate to Trump's refusal to restrain his speech because trying to avoid giving offense to people is hard work. It's almost like schoolwork, and the same people are good at it, for the same reasons -- because they're grade-grubbing goody-goodies who seem to like spoiling everyone else's fun.

  • [10-29] No, Trump is still not "a spent and exhausted force": Disputes the Jamelle Bouie piece I cited above.

  • [10-30] A war at home is still a war, guys:

    This is a reminder of one reason Donald Trump is winning over some young men, apart from the bro-ishness and misogyny of his campaign: Trump and his surrogates have young men convinced that a vote for Harris is a vote for war. Trump regularly says that a Harris presidency will lead to World War III, while he'll instantly, magically, and single-handedly end all the major wars taking place right now and prevent future wars by means of a slogan, "Peace Through Strength." Harris, regrettably, has welcomed the support not only of Liz Cheney (who has stood up for the rule of law in recent years) but also of her father, whom nobody admires these days and who was unquestionably a warmonger.

• Seth Meyers: [10-31] A Closer Look: Trump's embarrassing garbage stunt might be his most surreal photo op ever.

Vance, and other Republicans:

• Zack Beauchamp: [10-23] The banality of Elon: "When it comes to politics, Elon Musk's ideas are utterly, revealingly conventional."

• Dan Diamond: [10-30] Mike Johnson vows major changes to Affordable Care Act if Trump wins election. This, of course, led to:

  • Emine Yücel: [10-30] Trump camp attempts damage control after Johnson caught being too explicit about gutting ACA.

  • Dylan Scott: [10-31] Republicans are serious about cutting people's health care: "Donald Trump's election could allow the GOP to gut Medicaid and protections for preexisting conditions."

• Tony Romm: [10-29] Musk's plan to cut $2 trillion in US spending could bring economic turmoil. And why does anyone care what Musk thinks? Oh yeah, because Trump's his bitch.

• Matt Sledge: Mitch McConnell group funneled cash to a PAC pitting Arab and Jewish voters against Harris.

• Benjamin Wallace-Wells: [10-28] The improbable rise of JD Vance.

• Jessica Washington/Shawn Musgrave: Inside Ron DeSantis's quest to trample the wioll of Florida voters on abortion.

Harris:

• James Carville: [10-23] Three reasons I'm certain Kamala Harris will win: Spoken like the hack-consultant he's always been:

  1. Trump is a repeat electoral loser. This time will be no different.
  2. Money matters, and Harris has it in droves.
  3. It's just a feeling.

  His feeling?

  For the past decade, Trump has infected American life with a malignant political sickness, one that would have wiped out many other global democracies. On Jan. 6, 2021, our democracy itself nearly succumbed to it. But Trump has stated clearly that this will be the last time he runs for president. That is exactly why we should be exhilarated by what comes next: Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake -- certainly not his running mate.

• Lydie Lake: [10-30] Harris's final push before election day: "Kamala Harris delivered her closing argument in a charged pre-election rally near the White House."

• Colleen Long/Darlene Superville/Nadia Lathan: [10-25] Beyoncé and Kamala Harris team up for Houston rally. One big thing they talked about was abortion, including how in Texas "the infant death rate has increased, more babies have died of birth defects and maternal mortality has risen.

• Chris Megerian/Colleen Long/Steve Karnowski: [10-17] Following death of Hamas leader, Harris says it's 'time for the day after to begin' in Gaza. If by "day after" you mean the day after the killing ends, that's been overdue since Oct. 8, 2023 (and really many years before), but the statement would seem to reject the idea that the war has to go on until there are no Palestiniains left to kill, which seems to be Netanyahu's agenda.

• Christian Paz: [10-24] How "Trump is a fascist" became Kamala's closing argument: "Brat summer is over; 'Trump is a fascist' fall is in." I chased this piece down after Nathan J Robinson tweeted:

  One of the main mistakes Hillary Clinton made was making her central message "Trump is bad" without offering a positive case for why she would be a good president. The error is being repeated.

  A quick search reveals more complaints about this as a strategy, along with much consternation that Harris is blowing the campaign, possibly letting Trump win. I get that the "Trump is a fascist" jab is suddenly fashionable thanks to the Kelly quote, although it's been commonplace for years among people who know much about the history of fascism, and are willing to define it broadly enough that a 78-year-old American might qualify. I'd say that Trump is a bit more complicated and peculiar than simply being a generic fascist, although sure, if you formulated a generic F-scale, he would pass as a fascist, and it wouldn't be a close call. But I have two worries here: one is that most Americans don't know or care much about fascism -- other than that it's a generic slur, which judging from his use of the word (e.g., to slam "radical leftists") seems to be his understanding; the other is that there are lots of other adjectives and epithets that get more surely and much quicker to the point of why Trump is bad: even fancy words like sociopath, narcissist, oligarch, and misanthrope work better; as well as more common ones like racist, sexist, elitist, demagogue; you could point out that he's both a blowhard and a buffoon; or you could settle for something a bit more colorful, like "flaming asshole." Or rather than just using labels/names, you could expand on how he talks and acts, about his scams and delusions -- sorry if I haven't mentioned lies before, but they come in so many flavors and variations you could do a whole taxonomy, like the list of fallacies (many of which he exemplifies -- at least the ones that don't demand much logic).

  As for Robinson's complaint, I think that's typical of left intellectuals, who've spent all their lives trying to win people over on issues. Politicians have to be more practical, especially because they have to win majorities, while all activists can hope for are incremental gains. Harris has a lot of planks in her platform, and if you're seriously interested in policy, there's a lot to talk about there (and not all good, even if, like most leftists, you're willing to settle for small increments). But to win an election, she needs to focus on the elements that can get her majority support.

  And the one key thing that should put her over the top is that he's Donald Trump, and she isn't: that the only chance we voters have of getting rid of Trump is to vote for her. To do this, she needs to focus relentlessly on his negatives. She doesn't need to toot her own horn much, as every negative she exposes him for is an implicit contrast: to say "Trump is a fascist" implies that "I am not." That may not be saying much, but it's something, and it should be enough. And Robinson, at least, should know better. I find it hard -- I mean, he's just co-authored a book with Noam Chomsky -- seriously expects any Democrat to offer "a positive case for why she would be a good president." All any voter can do is pick one item from a limited, pre-arranged menu. Sometimes you do get a chance to vote for someone you really like or at least respect, but quite often the best you can do is to vote against the candidate you most despise.

  That choice seems awfully clear to me this year. Unfortunately, it appears that many people are still confused and/or misguided. At this point, I don't see any value in second-guessing the Harris campaign. I have no reason to think they don't want to win this as badly as I want them to win. They have lots of money, lots of research, and lots of organization. They think they're doing the right things, and I hope and pray they're right. It's endgame now, so let them run their last plays. And if they do lose, that will be the time to be merciless in your criticism. (That'll be about the only fun you'll have in the next four years. By the way, if you want a head start, check out this book.)

  • [08-08] "Trump is weird" will only get Kamala Harris so far: This is an older article by Paz, kicking off the "voters want to hear from Harris about Harris, not Trump or Biden" mantra.

  • Brian Bennett: [10-25] Why Harris' closing argument is focused more on Trump than her.

  • Sidney Blumenthal: [10-28] We are witnessing the making of a fascist president in real time.

  • Anand Giridharadas: [10-23] Real men reject fascism: "A note on Harris's closing argument."

  • Susan B Glasser: [10-24] Donald Trump and the F-word: "Kamala Harris embraces the 'fascist' label for the ex-President, without any certainty that it will disquality him."

  • Dylan Matthews: [10-23] Is Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in. "Call him a kleptocrat, an oligarch, a xenophobe, a racist, even an authoritarian. But he doesn't quite fit the definition of a fascist." Had the head writer read the article, they would have seen that it all depends on the definition, and here 8 "experts" are all over the map, although they all pretty much agree that Trump is an awful person and a dangerous politician who is up to no good. Unless you're writing a comparative historical analysis of right-wing political movements, that should be understanding enough to vote against him.

  • Jan-Werner Müller: [10-29] No, Trump is not a fascist. But that doesn't make him any less dangerous.

  • Robert Reich: [10-21] Trump's closing argument: full-throated fascism.

  • Alex Shephard: [10-25] This is what's missing from the fascism argument against Trump: "Yes, of course he's a threat to American democracy. But voters need to know how it affects them."

  • Michael Tomasky: [10-25] The best reason for calling Donald Trump a fascist? Easy: He is. "The famous 'closing argument' should be multipronged. But the f-word must be prominent in the mix."

  • Jonathan Weisman: [10-17] Harris and Democrats lose their reluctance to call Trump a fascist: "Since Gen. Mark Milley was quoted as saying Donald Trump is 'fascist to the core,' a term avoided by top members of the Democratic Party is suddenly everywhere." For me, the word "fascist" packs a lot of info in a small package. For others, that info may be undecipherable, in which case the charge rings hollow, or perhaps just scatalogical. But obviously you don't get to be a general without studying a bit into WWII, which is where Milley and Kelly are coming from.

  • Marc A Thiessen: [10-24] Harris's closing argument is dishonest, desperate and hypocritical: "Trump isn't a fascist, and he didn't say he would use the military against his political opponents." But still not nearly as "dishonest, desperate and hypocritical" as this (or pretty much any) Thiessen column. Here's just one example:

    • Veronica Stracqualurst: [10-14] Trump suggests using military against 'enemy from within' on Election Day.

• Jennifer Rubin: [10-27] To understand the US economic success is to love Harris's plan: "Kamala Harris's economic proposals would build on the remarkable US comeback since the pandemic."

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

• Aaron Blake: [10-30] Did Biden call Trump supporters 'garbage'? It comes down to an apostrophe. "Republicans have long strained for a new Hillary Clinton-"deplorables" moment, but Biden's defense is entirely plausible." It mostly comes down to "who gives a fuck." I'm not in favor of epithets applied to broad swathes of people, but anyone offended by this is awfully thin-skinned.

  • Paige Oamek: [10-30] Trump trashes Democrats after claiming what Biden said was mean: "Donald Trump is back to his usual self, mere hours after complaining about Joe Biden's 'garbage' comment." Of course, I could have filed this in the Trump section, with so many other dumb and/or mean things he's saying, but I wanted to stress what I meant by thin-skinned.

  • Jonathan Chait: [10-30] Biden 'garbage' controversy is pure Republican hypocrisy: "Conservative snowflakes have a fainting spell over his stumble."

  • Eric Levitz: [10-30] The big lie behind Biden's "garbage" gaffe scandal: "Only one presidential candidate is pledging to treat Americans who vote against him as enemies."

• Joseph Bullington: [08-19] Republicans will weaponize rural suffering as long as Democrats ignore it: "JD Vance is a poser, but he's telling a dangerously compelling story about rural America that Democrats are doing nothing to defuse."

• Adam Johnson: [07-12] The best counter to Project 2025 is a Progressive Project 2025: "If President Biden -- or any Democratic replacement -- wants to get back in the race, they need a positive moral vision to run on, not just dire warnings." Obviously, the subhed is dated, and even if true (which it probably isn't), it's too late to affect the 2024 election. I'm not opposed to articulating "a positive moral vision" -- after Gaza, I'd even welcome a negative one, like "not that" -- but naming it "2025" implies you're seeking to power to implement big changes almost immediately, and that is neither realistic nor a very conducive vibe.

• Nicholas Lemann: [10-28] Bidenomics is starting to transform America. Why has no one noticed?

• Branko Marcetic: [10-23] The US isn't moving right -- the Democrats are.

• Li Zhou: [10-26] Michelle Obama made the case for abortion rights in a way Joe Biden never could: "In a searing speech, Obama laid out exactly what's at stake."

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [10-28] A new Supreme Court case could change the result of the presidential election.

  • [10-28] The Trumpiest judges in America want to toss out thousands of lawfully cast ballots.

  • [10-28] If Harris wins, will the Supreme Court steal the election for Trump? "It depends on how much Harris can run up the score."

  • [10-30] The Republican Supreme Court just blessed an illegal voter purge: "This is the latest in a string of favors this Court has done for the Republican Party."

Climate and environment:

• Andrea Mazzarino: [10-27] The All-American ravages of extreme weather.

• Olivia Rosane: [10-30] 'This is climate change': Devastating flooding kills more than 70 in Spain. Death count now seems to be at least 95, with more missing.

Business, labor, and Economists:

• Dean Baker:

  • [10-21] The Biden-Harris job boom: "Donald Trump seems to have forgotten what the economy was like when he left office. He talks as though it was booming and then Biden sank it. In fact, the opposite is the case."

  • [10-22] CNBC hides the extent to which Trump tax proposal would hurt moderate and middle-income families.

  • [10-23] Patent monopolies and pharmacy benefit managers: protectionism leads to corruption.

  • [10-28] Four more items in the wages outpacing prices debate.

• Paul Krugman:

  • [10-21] Trump on the Civil War, in his own words: "It's hard to compromise with those who consider any criticism a threat."

  • [10-24] How Trump could bankrupt Social Security: "Retirement benefits for millions of Americans are on the line."

  • [10-28] Trump's biggest con: pretending he's on the side of working men and women: "He's even more antilabor and pro-plutocrat than orthodox Republicans."

Ukraine and Russia:

• Sam Bull: [10-25] Diplomacy Watch: Ukraine and allies reeling as war heats up: "Russian progress and North Korean involvement prompt tough words and fu nding surge from US."

• Ariel Petrovics: [10-31] Why sanctions on Russia are literally backfiring.

• Lydia Polgreen: [10-29] We've just had a glimpse of the world to come. She's talking about "a lavish global summit in the Russian city of Kazan," the BRICS conference, where "Vladimir Putin looked like the cat who ate the canary." US sanctions were supposed to isolate Russia, to cripple its economy, and bring them back begging for peace and mercy. How has that worked out?

  • Amelia Nierenberg: [10-21] Understanding the BRICS summit: "The group, which seeks to rebalance the global order away from the West, will meet on Tuesday." Here's a primer.

  • Sarang Shidore: [09-01] American power just took a big hit.

• Aaron Sobczak: [10-24] Advocates demand Biden declassify Ukraine strategy: "We don't want a situation where we're engaged in a war without an achievable plan for victory."

Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:

• Noam Hurowitz: [10-23] Meet the world's least popular president: "With a 92 percent disapproval rating, Peru's Dina Boluarte is testing the very limits of disdain."

• Nick Turse: [10-23] The global war on children.

Other stories:

• Ross Rosenfeld: [10-30] How America's craven plutocrats busted the myth of the business hero: "The members of the billionaire executive class have billed themselves as great men of history beyond scrutiny and reproach. his is the year that shattered that illusion." Sorry to break this, but that illusion has been pretty thoroughly debunked at least since Ida B. Wells. And while I appreciate the occasional Harris supporter in their ranks, she isn't really that much of a reach: arguably she'll do better by them than their culturally simpatico golf cheat buddy.

• Jeffrey St Clair: [10-25] Roaming Charges: Antic dispositions: Some tidbits:

  • More than half of Trump's supporters don't believe he'll actually do many of the things he claims he'll do (mass deportations, siccing the military on domestic protesters and political rivals), while more than half of Harris's supporters hope she'll implement many of the policies (end the genocide/single-payer) she claims she won't. And that pretty much sums up this election.

  • Barnett R. Rubin, former US diplomat: "Why do people keep saying that US politics is polarized? Look at the big picture. Genocide enjoys broad bipartisan support."

  • Fox News' Brian Kilmeade defended Trump's statement that he wants the "kind of generals that Hitler had." Kilmeade: "I can absolutely see him go, it'd be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do, maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis or whatever." Kilmeade and Trump may not be "cognizant" of the fact that several "German generals" (von Stauffenberg, Friedrich Olbricht, and Ludwig Beck) tried to blow Hitler to bits and Germany's most famous General, Rommel, was forced to kill himself after being implicated in the plot.

  • Hours after the Washington Post announced its decision not to endorse [Kamala Harris, directed by Post owner Jeff Bezos], the Associated Press reported that Donald Trump met with executives from Blue Origin, the space company owned by Bezos that has a $3.4 billion NASA contract to build a spacecraft to take astronauts to the moon and back.

  • Eugene Debs: "I'd rather vote for something I want and don't get it, than vote for something I don't want and get it."

  • Trump: "I worked a shift at McDonalds yesterday." A McDonalds shift is eight hours, not 18 minutes . . . Dukakis in a tank looked less ridiculous.

  • Sounds familiar . . . [followed by a tweet which reads: "In 1938, Benito Mussolini closed off a wheat field & did a photo shoot showing him harvesting hay in order to portray himself as a common working man. He was surrounded by workers who had been vetted as loyal to the party." Includes a picture of the shirtless Fascist with cap and aviator goggles.]

  • Since 2001, forest fires have shifted north and grown more intense. According to a new study in Science, global CO2 emissions from forest fires have increased by 60% in the last two decades.

  • Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon called for the public execution of women who falsely claim to have been sexually assaulted: "MeToo would end real fast . . . All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied."

  • Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, on why he wants to abolish the Dept. of Education: "We formed that department so little Black girls could go to school down South, and we could have integrated schooling. We don't need that anymore."

  • Edward Luce, associate editor of the Financial Times: "Hard to overstate what a sinister figure Elon Musk is. Never seen one oligarch in a Western democracy intervene on anything like this scale with unending Goebbels-grade lies." Musk is the most obnoxious kid in middle school who is running the campaign of the school bully for student council without even being asked because even the school bully doesn't want to be around him . . .

Obituaries

• Barbara Dane: She started as a folksinger, and I heartily recommend her Anthology of American Folk Songs (1959), better than her memorably titled 1973 album, I Hate the Capitalist System, but she also recorded albums with Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Lightnin' Hopkins, and the Chambers Brothers, and I liked her 2016 jazz album Throw It Away enough for an A-.

  • Alex Williams: [10-25] Barbara Dane, who fought injustice through song, dies at 97: "She was highly regarded as a folk, blues and jazz singer. She was also ardently left-wing and prioritized social change over commercial success."

  • Jackson Albert Mann: [10-26] Socialist singer Barbara Dane was a true American radical.

• Fethullah Gulen:

  • Ishaan Tharoor: [10-21] Fethullah Gulen, Muslim cleric and target of Turkey's Erdogan, is dead: "Turkish authorities accused him of being the mastermind behind a 2016 coup attempt to topple the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan."

• Phil Lesh:

  • Jon Pareles: [10-25] Phil Lesh, bassist who anchored the Grateful Dead, dies at 84.

  • Brett Wilkins: [10-25] Phil Lesh, Grateful Dead founding bassist, dies at 84.

• Lewis Sorley:

  • Lewis Sorley, 90, who said the US won (but then lost) in Vietnam, dies: [10-30] Military historian. I've always hated the very idea of his book, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam, where he claimed that America could have and should have won the war in Vietnam, but was sabotaged by the peace movement, a fickle media, and weak-willed politicians. In Sorley's worldview, the war should have gone on forever.

• Also:

  • Claire Daly, master of the baritone saxophone, dies at 66.
  • Teri Garr, comic actress in offbeat roles, is dead at 79.
  • Gary Indiana, acerbic cultural critic and novelist, dies at 74.
  • Rudy May, a stingy master of the curveball, dies at 80.
  • Fernando Valenzuela, pitcher whose screwballs eluded batters, dies at 63.

Books

• Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Message

  • Hamid Dabashi: [10-17] How Ta-Nehisi Coates broke free of liberal Zionism.

  • Adam Johnson: [10-18] Ta-Nehisi Coates is challenging the cognitive dissonance of pro-Israel liberalism: "Coates is taking critiques of Zionism into the mainstream, chipping away at Israel's increasingly dubious liberal self-image."

• Juan Cole: Gaza Yet Stands:

  • Juan Cole: [10-26] Gaza Yet Stands: Juan Cole's new book.

Music (and other arts?)

• Rick Lopez: [10-24] Update.01 to The Sam Rivers Sessionography: A Work in Progress: Fulfilling his subtitle, with a very substantial addition, on top of a "magnificent" and "gorgeous" (to quote my own blurb) 764-page book that already seemed definitive. By the way, those words were written in advance of this "press release" quoted on page 3:

  Michael Hull's Fifth Column Films has begun work on a feature-length documentary about Sam Rivers through the lens of The Sam Rivers Sessionography, a book by Rick Lopez. Rivers was a musical genius who spent his life obsessed with creating intricate compositions that pushed music to places no one else could conceive of. It's only fitting that his biographer has invented an entirely new way to understand the life of an artist through a minutely detailed portrait that could only flower from the uniquely focused mind of Lopez. Rivers was a massive talent who has been mostly forgotten by the American jazz scene and is rarely included in the conversation about great masters of the art. Lopez's book and this film aim to correct that oversight, and make the case that Sam Rivers should take his place in the pantheon of the 20th century.

  Full disclosure: Michael Hull is my nephew. He started in Jason Bailey's Wichita-based film crew (e.g., My Day in the Barrel), produced a film Smokers no one has heard of, wrote a novel that hasn't been published and, most relevant here, made the superb documentary Betrayal at Attica. I've admired Lopez since I first discovered him twenty-some years ago, so the idea of introducing him and Mike was blindingly obvious. (I was also the person who introduced Mike and Liz Fink, although the gestation period on that project took much longer.) We have some money invested in this project, which you can take as a caveat if you wish, but I regard more as a vote of confidence. Still some ways to go, but here's a preliminary trailer and more information.

• John McWhorter: [10-24] It sounded like dancing, drinking and sex. It blew people's minds. I only noticed this piece on "the long, syncopated journey from Scott Joplin to Beyoncé" because Allen Lowe complained about it: "his views of ragime are just bizarre and beneath even the most minimal amount of knowledge, full of stereotypes and really thirdhand historiography"; Phil Dyess-Nugent added: "Having made his name writing about some things he seemed to understand, John McWhorter has since demonstrated his cluelessness on a vast array of subjects." That's my general impression of the few columns I've read, especially since his ridiculous Woke Racism book. This I'm less sure about, maybe because I don't know or chare that much about ragtime (or, I might as well admit, Beyoncé), so I'm mostly just noting a lot of name-dropping and connect-the-dots that favors obvious over interesting.

• Riotriot: [10-30] Takes by the ocean: Zambian nightlife and spongian jawbox.

Chatter

• Peter Daou [10-27]

  QUESTION: Who is worse for Palestinians, Trump or Harris?

  ANSWER: Harris is worse for Palestinians.

  WHY?

  1. Harris and Biden are already culpable for a year-long genocide.
  2. Like Trump, Harris vows to keep giving Israel unconditional support.
  3. Therefore, Trump can never match Harris's death toll.
  4. Rewarding Harris's war crimes with a vote emboldens Netanyahu and opens the floodgates for future tyrants.
  5. If Trump wins and Democrats suddenly decide massacring children is wrong, Trump will face much greater resistance to letting Israel commit atrocities.

  Bottom line: Voting third party is the only moral choice, but if liberals insist on comparing Trump to Harris, Harris is worse for Palestinians.

  I found this immediately after posting my preliminary draft on who to vote for president and why, so I've already explained why I disagree with Daou's conclusion so strongly. But perhaps I should stress one very important point, which is that voting is not a moral choice; it is a political choice. I'm not going to write a disquisition on the difference, but will insist that it is a category error to vote based on morality. As for Daou's five points:

  1. True, but the order is wrong, like saying "Speer and Hitler are already culpable," where the clearest charge against Speer (and Harris) is not breaking with their leader. By the way, Biden is more like Speer than to Hitler -- in playing follow-the-leader, but also given their critical position in the arms pipeline.
  2. Not false, but Harris (unlike Trump and Graham) has never said "finish the job," and she's not unaware of the human toll Israel's "self-defense" is taking, so I'd say that continued "unconditional support" is slightly less likely from her. Admittedly, that's a thin reed she has often taken pains to cover up.
  3. No way of predicting, but no reason to underestimate Trump's capacity for getting people killed. His general contempt for most of the world suggests quite the opposite.
  4. Clearly, massively false. Netanyahu's preference for Trump is widely known, not only through his own words and acts but through mutual donors like Myriam Adelson.
  5. Hard to know where to begin with this variation on "if the fascists win, the revolution will hasten." Ever hear of "moral hazard"? Sure, some Democrats may learn to blame the genocide on Trump -- as some Democrats came to blame Nixon for Vietnam -- but most will simply be shocked and search for scapegoats to blame, especially "pro-Palestinians" like Daou.

  Daou's conclusion that "Harris is worse for Palestinians" is horribly wrong, even if "Harris is no good for Palestinians" may well be true. But I wouldn't be much swayed if one could argue that one candidate would be good or better, because I've never looked at this conflict through that prism. I never quite bought the argument that "Palestinians have dug their own graves," but I did have sympathies for Israel at one point, which may be why I still wish to emphasize that genocide is bad (and I mean really bad) for Israel (and for America, which is implicated not just due to recent arms support but via longstanding cultural and political mores), and that in itself is reason enough to oppose it. (And sure, it's even worse for the killed than the killers, and that's another reason to oppose it, but it doesn't have to be the only one.)

  Some more comments on Daou's tweet:

  • Nathan J Robinson: Peter, this doesn't make sense. It could absolutely get worse under Trump. Any pressure to provide any aid whatsoever to Gaza will disappear. Greater pressure may be brought on Egypt to let Israel fully ethnically cleanse Gaza. Don't assume this is as bad as it can get.

  • Andrew Revkin: I sense @RudyGiuliani would disagree with you, @peterdaou, on who's worse for Palestinians. Here's how he explained the Trump plan at the #MSGRally tonight in his own words.

  • Films For Action: When we think of Trump in power again, we recall that even a genocide can get much worse. Trump just said that Netanyahu must "go further" in Gaza while criticizing Biden for "trying to hold him back." The full statement is highly worth reading: [link to Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats Statement on Presidential Election].

  • Shadowblade: Who moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?

  • Jonathan Blank Films: [Link to 'Trump would be the worst': Palestinians react to US presidential race.]

• Nathan J Robinson: [12-27] [comment attached to a clip of Tucker Carlson's MSG rally rant] The level of uncontrolled rage is terrifying, but I think if Trump is elected you will see it get far worse. The amount of overt racism will increase, the view of Democrats, leftists, migrants being scum in need of elimination. JD Vance has made clear that Pinochet is the model.

• Mehdi Hasan: [10-30] Donald Trump is going around telling Michigan Muslims he'll end the war, be the peace president, and how pro-Muslim (!) he is.

  Meanwhile, Dems sent Bill Clinton to lecture Michigan Muslims on how it's all Hamas's fault that Israel is massacring kids and killing civilians holding white flags.

  Whether or not they end up losing Michigan, at this point the Dems deserve to lose Michigan. Sheesh.

• Aaron Rupar: [10-31] Trump on Liz Cheney: "Let's put her with a rifle standing there with 9 barrels shooting at her. Let's see how she feels about it. You know, when the cuns are trained on her face."

Local tags (these can be linked to directly): music.

Original count: 228 links, 11718 words (15894 total)

Current count: 253 links, 12905 words (17532 total)

Speaking of Which: Top 10 Reasons to Vote for Harris vs. Trump

Blog link.

Daily Log

Birthday dinner was yesterday. I wrote up this post on Facebook:

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes, and especially to those who so kind for allowing me to cook for them. Plate photo below. Coconut rice in middle, surrounded by (cw from top): "eggplant delight"; beef curry with potatoes; okra; pork curry with mango pickle; "punchy-crunchy ginger salad" (sort of); chicken coconut curry; sweet potato curry. I shopped Wednesday. Thought I'd do more Thursday, but decided to go with what I got. Made the three meat curries Thursday evening, as well as oatmeal stout cake for dessert. They took a long time -- seems like everything does these days -- but I was pleased with the results (I wound up using Patak Mango Relish with the pork). Finishing up today was more of a struggle. The sweet potato is a variation on a pumpkin-tamarind, but took much longer. The salad is made with pickled ginger, but I didn't have several ingredients, and wound up trying a lot of different things in it before I got something that seemed to work. As I said, this was my first stab at Burmese. Clearly I have much more to learn, but the advertised "rivers of flavor" were certainly there.

I also wrote a letter to Jan Barnes with more detail on the dinner, the work involved, and future plans:

My hip condition has been diagnosed as sacroiliac joint dysfunction. That's where the pelvis fuses into the spine, so it's different from what they try to fix with hip replacement surgery. It does sometimes manifest as lower back pain. I've never been diagnosed as having arthritis, although pretty much everyone I've ever known has had it by the time they reached my age (now 74). I'm not sure what the technical definition is, but popularly it seems to be a synonym for getting old and creaky. I have some probable arthritis in my hands, but I also probably also have carpal tunnel syndrome, and suspect each makes the other worse.

I did get some physical therapy for the sacroiliac pain, but it didn't help much. The idea was to strengthen your hip muscles to relieve pressure on the joints, but the effect was to add muscle pain to joint pain. Had I stuck with it, presumably the muscle pain would fade and I'd be better. I've found that prednisone works much better, but so far I've hoarded my pills for future really bad days -- like when I do a lot of cooking. I figured yesterday would be one, especially after much pain the day before, but I held off on taking my last pills, and in the end didn't need to. That I can stand the pain I have suggests that other people have it much worse than I do. Or maybe that I have inherited some of my mother's high tolerance for pain. And possibly that bitching about it is itself therapy.

First day of cooking, as noted, was spectacularly successful. Second day was a chaotic mess. I started with the topping on the cake, which turned out perfect (although the "new" can of sweetened condensed milk was much browner than expected, I used it anyway, as the broiler would brown it anyway; I just had to be careful not to burn it). After that, I roasted eggplants, and made a sweet potato tamarind curry (recipe was for pumpkin, with sweet potato offered as an alternative, noting it would take longer to cook -- well over an hour in my case, vs. 8 minutes the recipe expected for pumpkin). I finished the "eggplant delight," which was not as good as I expected, but at least had one dish on the table. I sliced the okra and shallots, to stir-fry later. (I had, by that point, prepped big piles of chopped onions, garlic, shallots, ginger, shrimp powder, serrano chiles, cilantro, and mint, as most of the recipes call for them in various combinations.)

I started work on the "punchy-crunchy ginger salad," which as it turned out I only had about half of the specified ingredients for, but I figured it was my best candidate among the salads. It took hours to fiddle with until I got something I liked. The "punchy" is pickled ginger, like they serve in sushi restaurants (although the recipe cautioned to use the white rather than the more common pink). I had two aged but unopened jars in the pantry, as well as some lost in the back of the refrigerator. I didn't like the taste of the first jar I opened, so threw it out. The second wasn't great either, but good enough to use. I took out half of the jar, chopped it up, and put it in my salad bowl. (Later, when I thought it wasn't punchy enough, I added the rest, as well as some of the pickling fluid.)

The ginger would be mixed with shredded Chinese (napa) cabbage, but all I saw on my shopping day were soft and wilted, so I bought a small white cabbage head instead. I shredded one quarter of it, mixed it in, then decided I wanted a bit of color, so I shredded a similar amount of romaine lettuce. Then I added three roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise in narrow strips, then crosswise into thirds. That was the basic salad part. Next bit was to add the "crunchy," which called for roasted split peas, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, toasted sesame seeds, fried garlic slices, and chopped roasted peanuts. I only had the latter three, so I scrambled to find other things that might work. I thought cashews would be good, but couldn't find any (among the dozen other bags of nuts I stock; I did throw some hazelnuts in). I also felt short on "punchy," so I chopped up some pickled mango and mustard stem, and threw that in.

For dressing, the recipe called for lime juice and garlic oil. I didn't have the latter (or the presence of mind to dig out the roasted garlic in the refrigerator, which was packed in suitable oil), so I used toasted sesame oil, and supplemented the lime juice with pickled ginger juice. In the end, I decided it was good enough to serve, and a nice complement to everything else.

Meanwhile, I stir-fried the okra and shallots (which turned out very good -- the only dish I had no leftovers of), and started to heat the coconut milk for the rice. For the latter, I used the thicker "coconut cream," only to have it boil over, and put one burner out of commission. I started again on another burner, and failed to time what I was doing. In the end, some stuck to the bottom of the pan, but the part on top was done, and separated and fluffed up fairly nicely. Meanwhile, I scrambled for pans and reheated all of the curries. I was pretty frazzled by that point, trying to clean up a bit while moving between the salad and the burners, and in a particularly dumb moment, sliced my thumb, so had to bandage that up.

Eventually I got it all out into serving dishes, and (aside from the eggplant) it all turned out to be remarkably good. Six people total, not enough to eat all of the food, but plenty for the event. Despite the mess at the end, I wasn't as exhausted as is often the case with these dinners, so could socialize a bit. Later served the cake and three shrink-flated "pints" of Haagen-Dasz. (Cake recipe suggests making orange-date ice cream, which I've done in the past, but didn't attempt this time.)

I spent the last month thinking about this project, and now it's done, about as well as I had hoped. I have a fair amount of unused groceries and things, some of which I may use for a "leftovers" dinner some time next week. I wasn't able to make the famous "tea leaf salad" (which seems to be the "national dish"), mostly because I couldn't find the fermented tea leaves that go into the dressing, but also I didn't fully understand the "crunchy" mix-ins that go into it. In my frustration, I went on Amazon and ordered the missing ingredients: a jar of tea leaves, and a bag of "roasted beans" for the crunchy bits, but won't get them until mid-week. The rice and curries will keep, so that will be the new value-added to the "leftovers" dinner.

Other than that, I guess I'm ready to move on. I've barely started my weekly blog posts, but I do have a good start on my "Top Ten Reasons to Vote for Harris vs. Trump," so I'll move onto that first. Also need to get the upstairs room done. I have all of the paneling up in the closet, leaving the ceiling and the exoskeleton trim. (Walls are plaster-on-lath, so it's hard to find studs to secure shelves and drawers to. Plus the walls are all crooked anyway. The paneling is mostly glued up -- temporarily being held in with screws -- but I left gaps on all the edges, figuring I'd add 1x2 trim all around, and I could then attach other things to the trim boards. So I still have all the latter to do.) I should get the walls painted either today or tomorrow, then I still need to paint the trim (windows, doors, baseboards), which will take another day or two. Then we can start moving back in.

Also need to get working on my jazz poll project, which will kick off in mid-November, and take most of my time up to the end of the year.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, October archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 26 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 43065 [43039] rated (+26), 46 [41] unrated (+5).

Published another abbreviated Speaking of Which yesterday. Came to 212 links, 12063 words, but I added some more stuff this morning, and may add even more before this is posted. My computer time (listening and writing) was limited last week, mostly by a home repair project that drags on and on, with little hope of winding up soon. Well, maybe a little hope: the collapsed ceiling is repaired, old wallpaper removed, walls patched up, the bedroom walls primed, half of the closet paneling put up, and we just got back from buying finish paint. If I can muster the time, the paint and paneling should be doable in 2-3 days, but I haven't been able to get many good working shifts in, and I've repeatedly been snagged by Murphy's law.

Plus, I have another project this week, which is being pushed ahead by a deadline, plus the thought that it might be a lot more fun to do. That's my annual birthday dinner, scheduled for Friday, with at present nothing more than a concept: my first ever stab at making Burmese cuisine. I've often picked out exotic locales for past birthday dinners, and in my peak years managed to make twenty-some dishes.

But I've never picked one I had so little experience with and knew so little about. My experience is one take-out meal in New York at least 12 years ago. The reason I can date it is because I bought a Burmese cookbook shortly after, but it didn't have the dish that most delighted me from the restaurant, and nothing else really caught my eye, so I've never cooked anything from it. The concept came from seeing that cookbook on the shelf, and thinking maybe I should finally do something with it.

I may have made a dish or two from broader area cookbooks -- Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook introduced me to all hot spots from India through Indonesia and China to Japan -- and I've gone deep on Indian (although not necessarily Bengali), Thai, and Chinese, which border old Burma (now Myanmar), so I expect to be working within those parameters. But as of Tuesday afternoon, I still don't have a menu, much less any shopping or prep done. My only move so far has been to buy a second Burmese cookbook, plus one that's more generically southeast Asian. (I haven't generally been listing cookbooks in my "recent reading" roll, but added my old Burma: Rivers of Flavor last week, so I figured I might as well spotlight the new books as well.) Generic southeast Asian may well be what I wind up with -- especially given that the local grocers are mostly Vietnamese, plus a couple Indian.

I'm torn between working on the room and on the menu next, but either option seems more enticing that diddling further on this post. Should be enough here for any decent week.

New records reviewed this week:

• Nick Adema: Urban Chaos (2023 [2024], ZenneZ): [cd]: B+(***)
• JD Allen: The Dark, the Light, the Grey and the Colorful (2024, Savant): [sp]: B+(**)
• Andy Baker: From Here, From There (2018 [2024], Calligram): [cd]: B+(**)
• Basic: This Is Basic (2024, No Quarter): [sp]: B+(***)
• Big Freedia With the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra: Live at the Orpheum Theater (2023 [2024], Queen Diva): [sp]: B+(***)
• Anne Burnell & Mark Burnell: This Could Be the Start of Something Big (2024, Spectrum Music): [cd]: B
• Chris Corsano/Joe Baiza/Mike Watt: Corsano Baiza Watt Trio (2023 [2024], Yucca Alta): [bc]: B+(*)
• Doug Ferony With His Swingin Big Band: Alright Okay You Win (Ferony Enterprizes Music)
• Ingebrigt Håker Flaten/(Exit) Knarr: Breezy (2024, Sonic Transmissions): [sp]: B+(**)
• Floating Points: Cascade (2024, Ninja Tune): [sp]: A-
• Darius Jones: Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (2024, AUM Fidelity): [cd]: A-
• Doug MacDonald and the Coachella Valley Trio: Live at the Rancho Mirage Library (2024, DMAC Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Mark Masters Ensemble: Sui Generis (2023 [2024], Capri): [cd]: B+(**)
• Gurf Morlix: In Love at Zero Degrees (2024, Rootball): [sp]: B+(**)
• Eric Person: Rhythm Edge (2024, Distinction): [cd]: B
• Jason Robinson: Ancestral Numbers II (2023 [2024], Playscape): [cd]: A-
• Snotty Nose Rez Kids: Red Future (2024, Savage Mob): [sp]: B+(***)
• Moses Sumney: Sophcore (2024, Tuntum, EP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Ohad Talmor/Chris Tordini/Eric McPherson: Back to the Land (2023 [2024], Intakt, 2CD): [sp]: B+(***)
• Fred Thomas: Window in the Rhythm (2024, Polyvinyl): [sp]: B+(*)
• Tropical Fuck Storm: Tropical Fuck Storm's Inflatable Graveyard (2024, Three Lobed): [sp]: B+(*)
• Jack Wood & Nichaud Fitzgibbon: Movie Magic: Great Songs From the Movies (2024, Jazz Hang): [cd]: B+(**)
• Jamie xx: In Waves (2024, Young): [sp]: A-
• Dann Zinn: Two Roads (2024, Ridgeway): [cd]: B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• William Basinski: September 23rd (1982, Temporary Residence): [bc]: B+(*)

Old music:

• Adema Manoukas Octet: New Roots (2021 [2022], self-released): [bc]: B+(***)
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe: The Swinging Gospel Queen 1939-1947 (1939-47 [1998], Blues Collection): [sp]: A-
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live in 1960 (1960 [1991], ORG Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Sister on Tour (1961, Verve): [sp]: B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• The Attic & Eve Risser: La Grande Crue (NoBusiness) [10-04]
• Arthur Blythe Quartet: Live From Studio Rivbea: July 6, 1976 (NoBusiness) [10-04]
• Bill Evans: In Norway: The Kongsberg Concert (1970, Elemental Music, 2CD) [11-29]
• Joe Fonda Quartet: Eyes on the Horizon (Long Song) [11-15]
• Joel Futterman: Innervoice (NoBusiness) [10-04]
• Andrew Hill: A Beautiful Day Revisited (2002, Palmetto, 2CD) [11-01]
• B.B. King: In France: Live at the 1977 Nancy Jazz Pulsations Festival (Deep Digs/Elemental Music) [11-29]
• Michael McNeill: Barcode Poetry (Infrasonic Press) [10-01]
• William Parker/Hugo Costa/Philipp Emsting: Pulsar (NoBusiness) [10-04]
• Emily Remler: Cookin' at the Queens (1984-88, Resonance, 2CD) [11-29]
• Sara Serpa: Encounters & Collisions (Biophilia) [11-15]
• Spinifex: Undrilling the Hole (TryTone) [11-22]
• Sun Ra: Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank (1978, Resonance, 2CD) [11-29]

Speaking of Which

Blog link.

File initially opened 2024-10-16 01:00 PM.

Late Monday night, I'm posting this, without any real sense of where I'm at, how much I've looked at, and how much more I should have considered. I have no introduction, and at this point can't even be troubled to think up excuses. (Perhaps I'll write something about that in tomorrow's Music Week -- assuming there is one: my problem there isn't lack of records but no time, given other demands and priorities.) One thing I am confident of is that there is a lot of material below. Maybe I'll add more on Tuesday, but don't count on it.

Top story threads:

Israel's year of infamy: Given the hasty nature of last week's Speaking of Which, it was inevitable that I'd need another week (or more) for one-year anniversary pieces.

• Spencer Ackerman: [10-03] The year after October 7th was shaped by the 23 years after September 11th: "9/11 gave Israel and the US a template to follow -- one that turned grief into rage into dehumanization into mass death. What have we learned from the so-called 'war on terror'?" That it feels better to make the same mistakes over and over again rather than learn from them? Worth noting that the US response to 9/11 was modeled on Israel's by-then-long war against the Palestinians (recently escalated in the Sharon's counter-intifada, effectively a reconquista against Palestinian Authority, which saved Hamas for future destruction).

  • [10-10] Gaza is a laboratory for future warfare: Podcast with Paris Marx.

• Haidar Eid: 10-13] A vision for freedom is more important than ever: "We must focus on the present as conditions in Gaza worsen daily, but a clear strategy and political vision are crucial to inspire people around the world as to what is possible."

• Dave Reed: [10-13] Weekly Briefing: Looking back at a year of Israeli genocide.

• Jeffrey St Clair: [10-18] Israel unbound: October in Gaza, one year later.

  A retaliatory military operation that many wizened pundits predicted would last no more than a month or so has now thundered on in ever-escalating episodes of violence and mass destruction for a year with no sign of relenting. What began as a war of vengeance has become a war of annihilation, not just of Hamas, but of Palestinian life and culture in Gaza and beyond.

  While few took them seriously at the time, Israeli leaders spelled out in explicit terms the savage goals of their war and the unrestrained means they were going to use to prosecute it. This was going to be a campaign of collective punishment where every conceivable target -- school, hospital, mosque -- would be fair game. Here was Israel unbound. The old rules of war and international law were not only going to be ignored; they would be ridiculed and mocked by the Israeli leadership, which, in the days after the October 7 attacks, announced their intention to immiserate, starve, and displace more than 2 million Palestinians and kill anyone who stood in their way -- man, woman or child.

  For the last 17 years, the people of Gaza have been living a marginal existence, laboring under the cruel constrictions of a crushing Israeli embargo, where the daily allotments of food allowed into the Strip were measured out down to the calorie. Now, the blockade was about to become total. On October 9, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned: "I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, food, or fuel; everything is closed." He wasn't kidding.

  This goes on for 14 more paragraphs, all deserving your attention, before he descends into his usual plethora of bullet points -- dozens of them, his attention never straying to the more pedestrian atrocities he often (and compared to most others exceptionally) reports on. He ends with this:

  The war of revenge has become a war of dispossession, conquest and annexation, where war crime feeds on war crime. Not even the lives of the Israeli hostages will stand in the way; they will become Israeli martyrs in the cause of cleansing Gaza of Palestinians. . . .

  It's equally apparent that nothing Israel does, including killing American grandmothers, college students, and aid workers, will trigger the US government, whether it's under the control of Biden, Harris, or Trump, to intervene to stop them or even pull the plug on the arms shipments that make this genocidal war possible.

  Followed by a list of sources:

  • Linda Bilmes/William Hartung/Stephen Semler: United States spending on Israel's military operations and related US operations in the region, October 7, 2023-September 30, 2024.

  • Rasha Khatib/Martin McKee/Salim Yusuf: [07-20] Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential.

  • Adam Taylor/Leo Sands/Kelly Kasulis Cho/Adela Suliman: [10-14] What to know about US support for Israel after a year of war.

  • Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor: [04-24] 200 days of military attacks on Gaza: "A horrific death toll amid intl. failure to stop Israel's genocide of Palestinians."

  • UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: Reported impact snapshot, Gaza Strip (16 October 2024).

  • UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs: [10-15] Humanitarian situation update #229, Gaza Strip.

  • World Food Program: [10-17] New Gaza food security assessment sees famine risk persisting amid ongoing fighting and restricted aid operations.

• Oren Yiftachel: [10-15] Is this Israel's first apartheid war? "Far from lacking a political strategy, Israel is fighting to reinforce the supremacist project it has built for decades between the river and the sea." The author thinks so, while acknowledging the long history of war that preceded this year's war:

  While its eight previous wars attempted to create new geographical and political orders or were limited to specific regions, the current one seeks to reinforce the supremacist political project Israel has built throughout the entire land, and which the October 7 assault fundamentally challenged. Accordingly, there is also a steadfast refusal to explore any path to reconciliation or even a ceasefire with the Palestinians.

  Israel's supremacist order, which was once termed "creeping" and more recently "deepening apartheid," has long historical roots. It has been concealed in recent decades by the so-called peace process, promises of a "temporary occupation," and claims that Israel has "no partner" to negotiate with. But the reality of the apartheid project has become increasingly conspicuous in recent years, especially under Netanyahu's leadership.

  Today, Israel makes no effort to hide its supremacist aims. The Jewish Nation-State Law of 2018 declared that "the right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people," and that "the state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value." Taking this a step further, the current Israeli government's manifesto (known as its "guiding principles") proudly stated in 2022 that "the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all areas of the Land of Israel" -- which, in the Hebrew lexicon, includes Gaza and the West Bank -- and promises to "promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel."

  My reservation here is that the "apartheid program" goes way back, at least to 1948 when Israelis declared independence and set up a separate judicial system for Palestinians in areas they controlled, retaining it even after Palestinians became nominal citizens of Israel. In effect, Israeli apartheid goes back to the "Hebrew labor" concept adopted by Ben-Gurion's Histadrut in the 1930s. (By the way, South Africa's Apartheid laws were only formalized in 1950, although, as with Israel, the roots of racist discrimination ran much deeper. The ideas behind South Africa's legal thinking drew heavily on America's Jim Crow laws, which were also notable sources for Nazi Germany's race laws.) So what's new since October 7 isn't apartheid, but the nature of the war, which has crossed over the line from harsh enforcement to genocide: the purpose of which is not just to punish Hamas for the insolence of rebellion, but to purge Israel of all Palestinians:

  Under the fog of this onslaught on Gaza, the colonial takeover of the West Bank has also accelerated over the past year. Israel has introduced new measures of administrative annexation; settler violence has further intensified with the backing of the army; dozens of new outposts have been established, contributing to the expulsion of Palestinian communities; Palestinian cities have been subjected to suffocating economic closures; and the Israeli army's violent repression of armed resistance has reached levels not seen since the Second Intifada -- especially in the refugee camps of Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem. The previously tenuous distinction between Areas A, B, and C has been completely erased: the Israeli army operates freely throughout the entire territory.

  At the same time, Israel has deepened the oppression of Palestinians inside the Green Line and their status as second-class citizens. It has intensified its severe restrictions on their political activity through increased surveillance, arrests, dismissals, suspensions, and harassment. Arab leaders are labeled "terror supporters," and the authorities are carrying out an unprecedented wave of house demolitions -- especially in the Negev/Naqab, where the number of demolitions in 2023 (which reached a record of 3,283) was higher than the number for Jews across the entire state. At the same time, the police all but gave up on tackling the serious problem of organized crime in Arab communities. Hence, we can see a common strategy across all the territories Israel controls to repress Palestinians and cement Jewish supremacy.

  Near the end of the article, the author points to A Land for All: Two States One Homeland as an alternative, and cites various pieces on confederation. I'm not wild about these approaches, but I'd welcome any changes that would reduce the drive of people on both sides to kill one another.

Israel:

• Mondoweiss:

  • [10-10] Day 370: Israel strangles northern Gaza in apparent implementation of the 'Generals' Plan': "Israeli strikes target the last functioning bakery in northern Gaza while Israeli troops continue to besiege and invade Jabalia for the sixth day in a row. Meanwhile, Israeli forces encounter heavy resistance in southern Lebanon."

  • [10-14] Day 374: Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital burns patients alive<: "Israel bombed displacement shelters across Gaza and aid distribution points in Jabalia, while Hezbollah intensified its fire on Haifa and Tel Aviv amid Israel's continued bombardment of southern Lebanese towns."

  • [10-17] Day 377: Israel says it killed Yahya Sinwar as the extermination of Jabalia continues: "Israel has committed a new massacre in Jabalia as it continues its siege on northern Gaza."

  • [10-21] Day 381: Israel pummels northern Gaza amid intensifying extermination campaign: "Israel's conditions for a ceasefire with Lebanon include allowing the Israeli army to continue operating in Lebanese territory. Meanwhile, Israel steps up its extermination campaign in northern Gaza, targeting its last remaining hospitals."

• Dave DeCamp:

  • [10-16] Netanyahu approves set of targets to hit inside Iran: "Israel is expected to attack before the November 5 US presidential election."

  • [10-16] Israeli soldiers say ethnic cleansing plan in North Gaza is underway: "A reserve soldier told Haaretz that anyone who remains in the north after a deadline 'will be considered an enemy and will be killed.'"

  • [10-17] Israel says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has been killed. More on Sinwar

    • David Dayen: [10-17] In Israel, the war is also the goal: "Yahya Sinwar's death is unlikely to change the situation in Gaza." This has long been evident, but it's nice to see new people noticing:

      That Netanyahu's personal and political goals vastly outweigh whatever could resemble military goals in this war in Gaza by now has become a cliché. Netanyahu wants to stay out of prison, and ending the war is likely to place him there. So new missions and operations and objectives sprout up for no reason.

      Suddenly Bibi's party has mused about re-settling northern Gaza for the first time in nearly 20 years, while transparently using a policy of mass starvation as a way to implement it. . . .

      The war has long passed any moment where Israel has any interest in declaring victory, in the fight against terror or in the fight for the security of its people. Even bringing up the fact of continued Israeli hostages inside Gaza seems irrelevant at this point. The war is actually the goal itself, a continuation of punishment to fulfill the needs of the prime minister and his far-right political aims. The annals of blowback indicate pretty clearly that incessant bombing of hospitals and refugee camps will create many Yahya Sinwars, more than who can be killed. That is not something that particularly burdens the Israeli government. Another pretext would serve their continuing interests.

    • Griffin Eckstein: [10-17] Harris sees "opportunity to end" to Israel-Gaza war in Hamas leader Sinwar's killing: Nice spin, especially after Biden's me-too statement, but naive and/or disingenuous. Surely she knows that the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't end with regime change or the later deaths of Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar, or Osama Bin Laden. Sure, those deaths seemed like good ideas at the time, but by the time they happened many more people had been killed, and more people rose from nowhere to fight back, and then they too had to be killed, because once you -- by which I mean the kind of people who lead countries and start wars -- start killing, there's always more to do. Still, Harris deserves a nod for even imagining that some other path is possible. Whether she deserves it depends on whether she can follow through and act upon her insight. Unfortunately, to do so would mean she has to develop enough backbone to defy and put pressure on Netanyahu, which thus far she hasn't risked.

    • James Mackenzie/Nidal Al-Mughrabi/Samia Nakhoul: [10-17] Hamas leader Sinwar killed by Israeli troops in Gaza, Netanyahu says war will go on. Because the point never was Sinwar or Hamas or the October 7 revolt.

    • Qassam Muaddi: [10-17] Israel says it killed Yahya Sinwar as he was fighting the Israeli army: "The Israeli army said on Thursday that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar had been killed in combat during an armed confrontation with an Israeli army patrol in Rafah."

    • Abdaljawad Omar: [10-21] It was only their machines: on Yahya Sinwar's last stand: "Yahya Sinwar's last stand laid bare Israel's weakness, exposing the truth about its post-heroic army that only survives from a distance and remains shielded by armor, unwilling to face its enemies head-on."

    • Bernie Sanders: [10-18] Sinwar is dead; we must end our complicity in this cruel and illegal war. Note that this is not a syllogism: the conclusion was true even when Sinwar was still alive.

    • Steven Simon: [10-17] The demise of Yahya Sinwar and his 'big project': "The Hamas leader overestimated Israel's fractures and underestimated Netanyahu's willingness to destroy Gaza." I'm not convinced that either of these assertions are true. I tend to see his "big project" as an act of desperation, aimed to expose Israel's brutality, as well as imposing some measure of cost for an oppression that had become routinized and uninteresting for most people not directly affected. It seems highly unlikely that he underestimated Netanyahu's monstrosity, although he might not unreasonably have expected that others, like the US, would have sought to moderate Israel's response. But even as events unfolded, Israel has done an immense amount of damage to its international reputation, as has America. While it's fair to say that Sinwar made a bad bet for the Palestinian people, the final costs to Israel are still accumulating, and will continue to do so as long as Netanyahu keeps killing.

    • Ishaan Tharoor: [10-20] What will Yahya Sinwar's death mean for Gaza? Not peace. Which kind of begs a question too obvious for mainstream media, which is why kill him if doing so doesn't bring you closer to peace?

• Jamal Kanj: [10-18] The Israeli General's Plan in Gaza: Genocide by starvation.

• Edo Konrad: [10-16] The 'pact of silence' between Israelis and their media: "Israel's long-subservient media has spent the past year imbuing the public with a sense of righteousness over the Gaza war. Reversing this indoctrination, says media observer Oren Persico, could take decades." I've long been critical of US mainstream media sources for their uncritical echoing of Israeli hasbara, but Israel -- where major media, 20-30 years ago, seemed to be far more open to critically discussing the occupation than American outlets were -- has become far more cloistered. Consider this:

  What Israeli journalists do not understand is that when the government passes its "Al Jazeera Law," it is ultimately about something much larger than merely targeting the channel. The current law is about banning news outlets that "endanger national security," but they also want to give the Israeli communications minister the right to prevent any foreign news network from operating in Israel that could "harm the national morale." What the Israeli public doesn't understand is that next in line is BBC Arabic, Sky News Arabic, and CNN. After that, they're going to come for Haaretz, Channel 12, and Channel 13.

  We are heading toward an autocratic, Orbán-esque regime and everything that comes with that -- in the courts, in academia, and in the media. Of course it is possible. It sounded unrealistic 10 years ago, then it sounded more realistic five years ago when Netanyahu's media-related legal scandals blew up. Then it became even more reasonable with the judicial overhaul, and even more so today. We're not there yet, but we are certainly on the way.

• Qassam Muaddi:

  • [10-15] What is the 'Generals' Plan'? Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, explained: "The ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza as part of the so-called 'Generals' Plan' isn't new, but the only thing standing in its way is the will of 200,000 Palestinians to stay in the north and refuse displacement."

  • [10-17] Bombings, killer drones, and starvation: eyewitnesses describe Israel's extermination campaign in northern Gaza: "Testimonies from the brutal siege on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza describe massive air and ground assaults, including killer quadcopter drones, that are destroying infrastructure and causing catastrophic humanitarian conditions."

  • [10-21] Israel commits largest massacre yet in northern Gaza: "The siege of north Gaza and Jabalia refugee camp enters its third week as Israel has cut off aid to some 200,000 people. On Saturday, Israeli forces bombed Beit Lahia, killing at least 80 Palestinians, in one of the largest massacres in months."

Lebanon:

• Dave DeCamp: [10-20] Israel starts bombing banks in Lebanon: "The Israeli military is targeting branches of al-Quard al-Hassan, which Israel accuses of financing Hezbollah."

• Qassam Muaddi: [10-21] Israel presents its conditions for Lebanon ceasefire as Hezbollah intensifies operations: "Israel's conditions for a ceasefire in Lebanon include allowing Israel to operate inside Lebanese territory against Hezbollah and freedom of movement for Israel's air force in Lebanon's airspace."

• Adam Shatz: [10-11] After Nasrallah. Long piece, lot of background on Nasrallah and Hizbullah.

  It's hard to see what strategy, if any, lies behind Israel's reckless escalation of its war. But the line between tactics and strategy may not mean much in the case of Israel, a state that has been at war since its creation. The identity of the enemy changes -- the Arab armies, Nasser, the PLO, Iraq, Iran, Hizbullah, Hamas -- but the war never ends. Israel's leaders claim this war is existential, a matter of Jewish survival, and there is a grain of truth in this claim, because the state is incapable of imagining Israeli Jewish existence except on the basis of domination over another people. Escalation, therefore, may be precisely what Israel seeks, or is prepared to risk, since it views war as its duty and destiny. Randolph Bourne once said that 'war is the health of the state,' and Netanyahu and Gallant would certainly agree.

• Lylla Younes: Israel escalates attacks on Lebanese first responders -- potentially a war crime.

America's Israel (and Israel's America):

• Michael Arria:

  • [10-15] The Shift: Harris hits Michigan amid anger over Gaza policy: "And is Trump talking to Netanyahu?" He says he is:

    • Jasper Ward: [10-13] Trump says he recently spoke with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, which sounds much more ominous than his conversations with Putin, both evident violations of the Logan Act:

    • Ewan Palmer: [07-25] Donald Trump accused of repeatedly breaking 'Logan Act.

  • [10-17] The Shift: Another phony White House threat: "Biden has threatened to halt arms sales to Israel, but it's impossible to take the claim seriously."

  • [10-21] Leaked documents show Israel's alleged plans for Iran attack: "On October 18, two U.S. intelligence documents on a potential Israeli attack on Iran were leaked, one describing shifting missile deployments, and the other detailing possible Israeli rehearsals for a strike on Iran."

• Aida Chávez: After Israel killed Hamas leader, DC pushes to hand Palestine to Saudi Arabia: "Bent on a 'mega-deal' security pact with Saudi Arabia, Congress and the Biden administration see their chance."

• Matt Duss: [10-17] Yahya Sinwar's death can end this war: But it won't, because only Netanyahu can end the war, and he doesn't want to, because there are still Palestinians to dispossess and dispose of, and because Biden isn't going to make it hard on him to continue. But sure, if one did want to end the war, checking Sinwar off your "to do" list offers a nice opportunity. On the other hand, negotiating a ceasefire with a credible leader like Sinwar would have been even better. This piece was cited by::

  • Robert Wright: [10-18] Why Israel won't take the win.

• Ellen Ioanes: [10-19] There's no ceasefire in sight for Israel's Gaza war. Why not? Any author, like this one, that doesn't squarely answers "Israel" has simply not been paying attention.

• Anatol Lieven: [10-10] Blinken's sad attempt to whitewash Biden's record: "By not acting with political and moral courage, this administration has actually failed abysmally on numerous counts."

• Alan MacLeod: [10-17] Revealed: The Israeli spies writing America's news.

• Steve McMaster/Khody Akhavi: [10-15] Netanyahu: Thank you America for your service: "One year after Gaza invasion, US complicity is everywhere in the smoldering ruins."

• Trita Parsi:

  • [10-15] Biden is helping Netanyahu attack Iran -- and risking the lives of US troops in the process: "By sending troops and the powerful THAA anti-missile system to Israel, the US is only fueling escalation in the Middle East."

  • [10-20] Who leaked US classified docs on potential Israeli attack plans? "Some are citing an Iranian hack, but let's look at who else would benefit from this strategic leak."

• Mitchell Plitnick: [10-18] No, the US is not 'putting pressure' in Israel to end its war: "A letter from the Biden administration to Israel this week threatening to possibly withhold weapons raised hopes among some, but the delivery of a missile defense system and deployment of U.S. soldiers sent the real message."

• Aaron Sobczak: [10-14] Biden sends US troops to Israel weeks ahead of election: "Recent polling suggests there is no American support for this."

• Alex de Waal: [10-20] Israel, a behind-the-scenes powerbroker in Sudan: "Of the many foreign powers influencing this bloody conflict, Tel Aviv could help claw it back -- if it wanted to.

• Sarah Leah Whitson: [09-27] Shared zones of interest: "Harris and Trump's foreign-policy aims in the Middle East proceed from the same incentive structures and presuppositions about US supremacy." This is an important point, which could be developed further.

  There are two principal reasons for this. First, Harris and Trump's worldviews are grounded in an article of faith that has undergirded America's post-World War II foreign policy: maintaining U.S. hegemony and supremacy. There is full agreement, as Kamala Harris recently declared at the Democratic convention and reiterated in her debate with former President Trump, that the U.S. must have the "most lethal" military in the world, and that we must maintain our military bases and personnel globally. While Trump may have a more openly mercenary approach, demanding that the beneficiaries of U.S. protection in Europe and Asia pay more for it, he is a unilateralist, not an isolationist. At bottom, neither candidate is revisiting the presuppositions of U.S. primacy.

  Second, both Harris and Trump are subject to the overwhelming incentive structure that rewards administrations for spending more on the military and selling more weapons abroad than any other country in the world. The sell-side defense industry has fully infiltrated the U.S. government, with campaign donations and a revolving escalator to keep Republicans and Democrats fully committed to promoting their interests. The buy-side foreign regimes have gotten in on the pay-to-play, ensuring handsome rewards to U.S. officials who ensure weapons sales continue. And all sides play the reverse leverage card: If the U.S. doesn't sell weapons, China and Russia (or even the U.K. and France) will. There is no countervailing economic pressure, and little political pressure, to force either Harris or Trump to consider the domestic and global harms of this spending and selling.

  In the Middle East, the incentive structure is at its most powerful, combining the influence of the defense industry and the seemingly bottomless disposable wealth of the Gulf States. And there are two additional factors -- the unparalleled influence and control of the pro-Israel lobby, which rewards government officials who comply with its demands and eliminates those who don't; and Arab control over the oil and gas spigots that determines the prices Americans pay for fuel. As a result, continued flows of money, weapons, and petroleum will ensue, regardless of who wins in November.

  Whitson is executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, after previously directing Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North African Division from 2004 to 2020. Here are some older articles:

  • [2023-03-28] Breaking away from secret concessions in the Middle East: "Saudi Arabia is exploiting great-power competititon to obtain security commitments from the US. This should be rejected."

  • [2022-06-24] America's Middle East 'withdrawal' breathes its last breath: "What was once a policy of disengagement has now become a policy of far more dangerous entanglement."

  • [2021-05-18] The Israel-Palestine narrative has evolved: "How words like 'apartheid,' 'land theft,' and 'ethnic cleansing' have entered the mainstream conversation."

  • [2021-04-15] Now is the time to end our 30-year war in Iraq: "The country is broken, but U.S. troops remain."

Israel vs. world opinion: Although my title is more generic, the keyword in my source file is "genocide," because that's what this is about, no matter how you try to style or deny it.

• Medea Benjamin/Nicolas JS Davies: [10-18] Israel's war on the world.

• Ana Gebrim/Marie-Caroline Saglio-Yatzimirsky: [10-05] Seeing and not seeing the catastrophe: Notes on fragmentation: "What prevents us from seeing and comprehending the catastrophe in Gaza? And why is there silence?"

• Patrick Howlett-Martin: [10-18] Israel's slippery slope to genocide: An extended comment on Omer Bartov, a Holocaust historian who has taken the question of Israeli genocide seriously -- see his initial [2023-11-10] What I believe as a historian of genocide, and his later [08-13] As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel, going deeper into the history of settler colonialism and its attendant genocides -- way too common to be called coincidental.

• New York War Crimes: [10-17] 'No one else is going to deliver the truth from Gaza': An interview with the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate: "Israel's slaughter of media workers in Gaza has been the most systemic attack on the press in world history. Shuruq As'ad of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate shares the conditions Palestinian reporters are facing while reporting on the genocide."

• KJ Noh: [10-16] Han Kang's Nobel Prize award is a cry for Palestine.

Election notes:

• Rachel M Cohen: [10-15] Nebraska is the only state with two abortion measures on the ballot. Confusion is the point. "The state's 12-week ban has already upended care. Anti-abortion leaders want to go further."

  • Audrey Hirsch: [10-15] Miscarriages are incredibly common. Abortion bans have made them less safe. "Since care for abortion and pregnancy is the same, restrictions on one have had disastrous impacts on the other."

  • Judith Levine: Abortion's future: "Activists, not elites, are leading the way forward in a world without Roe." Reviews several books:

    • Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer: The Fall of Roe: The Rise of a New America (Flatiron)
    • Shefali Luthra: Undue Burden: Life and Death in Post-Roe America (Doubleday)
    • Naomi Braine: Abortion Beyond the Law: Building a Global Feminist Movement for Self-Managed Abortion (Verso)

• Gabriel Debenedetti: Has a series of articles called "The Inside Game":

  • [10-14] David Plouffe on Harris vs. Trump: 'Too close for comfort': "The veteran strategist on the state of play for his boss, Kamala Harris, and what he thinks of the 'bed-wetters.'" He doesn't seem to have much to say about anything, which may be what passes as tradecraft in his world of high-stakes political consulting. It does seem like an incredible amount of money is being spent on a very thin slice of the electorate -- Plouffe is pretty explicit on how he's only concerned with the narrow battleground states.

  • [09-15] The WhatsApp Campaign: "Kamala Harris's team is looking for hard-to-find voters just about everywhere, including one platform favored by Latinos."

  • [10-02] How Tim Walz saved himself: "At first, he looked overmatched by JD Vance. Then came abortion, health care, and, above all, January 6."

  • [09-21] How Kamala Harris knocks out Trump: "Mark Robinson's Nazi-and-porn scandal ignites an all-out push to win North Carolina."

• Errol Louis: [10-17] Hey Democrats, don't panic -- here's why.

• John Morling: [10-21] It is not too late for the Uncommitted Movement to hold Democrats accountable for genocide: "The Uncommitted Movement voluntarily gave up its leverage but it is not too late to hold Kamala Harris accountable for supporting the Israeli genocide in Gaza." Yes, it is too late. The presidential election is about many things, but one thing it is not about is Israeli genocide. To insist that it is overlooks both that Trump has if anything been more supportive of genocide, and that while he was president, he did things that directly connect to the Oct. 7 Hamas revolt, and to Netanyahu's sense that he could use that revolt as a pretext for genocide.[*] On the other hand, punishing Harris suggest that none of the real differences between her and Trump matter to you. Most Democrats will not only disagree, they will blame you for any losses.

  [*] Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, abandoning a major tenet of international law. Trump ended the Iran nuclear deal. And Trump's invention of the Abraham Accords was widely considered as a major factor in Hamas's desperate attack.

• Andrew Prokop: [10-21] The big election shift that explains the 2024 election: "Progressives felt they were gaining. Now they're on the defensive." A new installment in a Vox series the point of which seems to be to tell leftists to go fuck themselves. As with the Levitz piece (also hereabouts), this article is half false and half bullshit. The false part starts with the "gaining" -- the success of the Sanders campaigns had less to do with ideological gains (although he made some, and continues to do so) than with his presentation of a non-corrupt alternative to a very corrupt system), and the adoption of some progressive thinking by Biden had more to do with the proven failures of much neoliberal thinking under Obama and Clinton -- and continues with the "defensive": Sanders' decision not to challenge Biden and (later) Harris was largely a concession to age, as well as a gesture of party unity against Trump and the increasingly deranged Republicans, but also a sense that Harris would be at least as willing to work toward progressive ends as Biden had been. That Harris, having secured the nomination with no real opposition from progressives or any other faction or interest group, should deliberately tack toward political orthodoxy may be disappointing to a few of us -- and in the especially urgent matters, like Israel's wars and genocide, we still feel the need to speak out[*] -- but the "assignment" (to use Chait's wretched phrase) is to win the election, and that involves reaching and convincing a majority of voters, way more than just self-conscious progressives, in an environment and culture that are severely warped by moneyed interests and mass media doublespeak. I'm inclined to trust that what she's saying is based on sound research and shrewd analysis with that one goal in mind. She's the politician, and I'm just a critic. If she loses, I'll take what little joy I can in dissecting her many failings, but if she wins, I can only be thankful for her political skills, at least for a few days, until her statements move from vote-grubbing to policy-making, in which case we critics will have a lot of expertise to offer.

  As for the left, I'm more bullish than ever. Capitalism creates a lot of benefits, but it is also a prodigious generator of crises and chronic maladies, and it fuels political ideologies that seek to concentrate power but only compound and exacerbate them. Anyone who wants to understand and solve (or at least ameliorate) thsee systemic problems needs to look to the left, because that's where the answers are. Granted, the left's first-generation solutions -- proletarian revolution and communism -- were a bit extreme, but over many years, we've refined them into more modest reforms, which can preserve capitalism's advances while making them safer, sustainable, and ultimately much more satisfying. Post-Obama Democrats haven't moved left but at least have opened up to the possibility that the left has realistic proposals, and have adopted some after realizing that politics isn't just about winning elections, it's also about delivering tangible benefits to your voters. (Obama and Clinton no doubt delivered tangible benefits to their donors, but neglect of their base is a big part of the reason Trump was able to con his way into his disastrous 2016 win.)

  No problems are going to be solved on November 5. What will be decided is who (which team) gets stuck with the problems we already have. Republicans will not only not solve any of those problems, they -- both judging from their track record and from their fantasy documents like Project 2025 (or Trump's somewhat more sanitized Agenda47 -- they will make them much worse for most people, and will try to lock down control so they can retain power even as popular opinion turns against them. Democrats will be hard-pressed to solve them too, especially if they revert to the failed neoliberal ideologies of the Clinton-Obama years. But when decent folk do look for meaningful change, the left will be there, with understanding and care and clear thinking and practical proposals. Left isn't an ideology. It's simply a direction, as we move away from hierarchy and oppression toward liberation and equality. It only goes away when we get there.

  [*] It's not like Communists did themselves any favors when in 1939, when after Stalin negotiated his "pact" with Hitler, they stuck to the party line and dropped their guard against Nazi Germany. Ben-Gurion did much better with his 1939 slogan: "We shall fight in the war against Hitler as if there were no White Paper, but we shall fight the White Paper as if there were no war." He ultimately succeeded on both counts.

  • David Weigel: [10-15] No matter who wins, the US is moving to the right: Prokop cites this piece, which argues that the rightward shift of 1980-2005 had been countered by a leftward drift from 2005-20, but since 2000 the tide has shifted back to the right. His evidence is superficial, mostly polling on language that correlates weakly with left/right. Biden may have talked more left in 2020 because he literally stole the nomination from Sanders, and desperately needed to shore up left support (which he managed to do). Harris got the nomination handed to her on a platter, with virtually no dissent from the left, so she's been free to wheel and deal on the right, for whatever short-term margin it might bring. But nobody on either side thinks she's more conservative or orthodox than Biden. That's why Republicans are in such a panic, so unmoored from reality.

• Tony Romm/Eric Lau/Adriana Navarro/Kevin Schaul: [10-18] Crypto cash is flooding the 2024 election. Here's who's benefiting.

• Matt Sledge:

  • Crypto billionaires could flip the Senate to the GOP. Here's what they want.

  • Elizabeth Warren's crypto haters are burning cash in her Senate race.

• Endorsements:

  • Wikipedia:

    • List of Kamala Harris 2024 presidential campaign endorsments.

    • List of Donald Trump 2024 presidential campaign endorsments.

    • News media endorsements in the 2024 United States persidential election.

  • Stephen Rohde: [10-07] Why the Uncommitted and Undecided should vote for Kamala Harris: "In sharp contrast to the lawless dictatorship Trump promises in his second term, I urge Undecided voters to examine how Harris would preserve democracy and continue to strengthen the United States." He also explains that "since Uncommitted voters care about the humanity and self-determination of the Palestinian people, Harris is their best choice."

Trump:

• Mariana Alfaro: [10-20] Musk promises a daily $1 million lottery in questionable pro-Trump effort: "Legal experts raised concerns about the legality of the move because it ties a monetary reward to voter registration status, which is prohibited under federal law."

• Zack Beauchamp:

  • [10-16] Critiquing Trump's economics -- from the right: "What one of the right's greatest thinkers would make of Trumponomics." On Friedrich Hayek, who saw himself as a classical liberal, and who saw everyone else even slightly to his left as marching on "the road to serfdom." But nothing here convinces me he would have a problem with Trump -- he was, like most of his cohort, a big Pinochet fan -- let alone that his opinion (having been wrong on nearly everything else) should matter to me.

  • p10-18] The increasingly bizarre -- and ominous -- home stretch of Trump's 2024 campaign: "The past week of erratic behavior shows how he manages to be silly and scary at the same time."

• Jamelle Bouie:

  • [10-18] There is no precedent for something like this in American history: Starts with General Milley's assessment of Trump as fascist.

  • [10-19] One thing about Trump I am not worried about.

• Philip Bump: [10-18] Trump's age finally catches up with him: "The man who would (once again) be the oldest president in history has reportedly scaled back his campaign due to fatigue. So who would run his White House?"

• Zachary D Carter: [10-16] The original angry populist: "Tom Watson was a heroic scion of the Boston Tea Party -- and the fevered progenitor of Donald Trump's violent fantasies." Link title was: "They say there's never been a man like Donald Trump in American politics. But there was -- and we should learn from him." If you're familiar with Watson, who started out as a Populist firebrand and wound up as a racist demagogue, it's probably thanks to C Vann Woodward, if not his 1938 biography, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel, then (as in my case) his 1955 book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow. But this, of course, is mostly about Trump.

  Something important happened at the end of Trump's presidency and the beginning of Joe Biden's. Nobody wants to talk about it -- not even conservatives bring up masks and school closures anymore, and much of the discourse surrounding inflation studiously avoids reference to the massive economic disruption of COVID-19. But one of the most important cultural artifacts of the period is the sudden spread of vaccine skepticism to the cultural mainstream. The anti-vaxxer delusion that vaccines cause autism has lingered at the fringes of the autism community in no small part because it provides narrative meaning to a difficult and random experience. There is tremendous joy in the life of a special needs parent, but there is also a great deal of fear and pain. Fear, because you do not know how the world will respond to your child, and pain, because you must watch your child struggle for no fault of their own. For many, it is more comforting to believe that their child's hardships are not a random act of fate but a product of deliberate malfeasance. The idea that bad things happen for bad reasons is more palatable than the belief that they happen for no reason at all.

  It is not only anti-vaxxers who seek such comfort. Americans on both the left and the right avert their eyes from the story of Tom Watson not only because the story is ugly and violent but because we insist on being able to control our own destiny. From Huck Finn to Indiana Jones, American mythology tends to write its heroes as variations on the story of David and Goliath -- tales of underdogs who secure unlikely triumphs against an overbearing order. Even when that order is part of America itself, individual heroism soothes the audience with the promise that the world's wrongs can be righted with enough derring-do. Horatio Alger's novels of children born into poverty could be read as an indictment of the Gilded Age social order, but the romance of these stories always lies in a boy taking fate by the horns. Watson disturbs us not only because he turns to evil but because an extraordinary leader's earnest, Herculean attempt to right the world's wrongs comes up short. To win, he assents to the dominion of dark forces beyond his control.

• Chas Danner: [10-15] Trump turned his town hall into a dance party after fans got sick. This was much ridiculed by late night comics, so I've seen much of Trump and Kristi Noem on stage, but very little of the crowd, which is usually the definition of a "dance party." How did the crowd react after his bumbling responses to five setup questions? It's hard to imagine them thrilling to multiple versions of "Ava Maria," but it's also hard to imagine them showing up for the information. I wonder if Trump rallies aren't like "be-ins" in the 1960s, where crowds assemble to associate with similar people and complain about the others. Trump defines who shows up, but after that, does it really matter what he says or does? This was a test case, but if you start thinking everything Trump does or says is stupid, your confirmation bias kicked in instantly, without raising the obvious next question, why do crowds flock to such inanity? Or are they as stupid as Trump?

• Chauncey DeVega:

  • [10-08] Trump's violent fantasies: Experts warn of "a terror that blinds us to what's coming next". "As much as Donald Trump crows about the need for 'law and order,' he is very much the embodiment of lawlessness and disorder."

  • [10-17] "Femiphobia" motivates MAGA males: Psychologist Stephen Ducat on the gendererd tribalism of Trumpism.

  • [10-18] "Thirst for the spectacle of Trump's cruelty": Exploring MAGA's unbreakable bond. Some time ago, I noted that there are two basic types of Christians in America: those whose understanding of their religion is to love their neighbors and seek to help them, and those who hate their neighbors, and see religion as a way to punish them for eternity -- it's no wonder that the latter group have come to define Christian Republicans.

    DaVega includes a long quote from Peter McLaren, then adds:

    McLaren notes "Trump is speaking to an audience that since 2016 has come to share Trump's worldview, his political intuition, his apprehension of the world, what the Germans call Weltanschauung and has created a visceral, almost savage bond with the aspiring dictator."

    As the next step in Trump's dictator and authoritarian-fascist plans, he is now embracing scientific racism and eugenics by telling his followers that nonwhite migrants, refugees and "illegal aliens" have bad genes, i.e. "a murder gene." Last Monday, Trump told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt that, "You know now, a murderer -- I believe this -- it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now." Take Trump's obsessions with good genes and bad genes and couple them with his remarks about "purifying the blood" of the nation by removing the human poison and other human vermin. Historically, both in American society and other parts of the world, people with the "bad genes" that Trump is so obsessed with have been removed from normal society through imprisonment and other means. Such targeted populations have also been subjected to eliminationist violence and forced sterilization.

    Sometimes I wonder if Trump's team doesn't just plant this obvious Nazi shit to provoke recognition and reaction. They know that it just sails past their own people, while it turns their opponents into whiny hysterics droning on about stuff no one else understands.

• Griffin Eckstein: [10-11] "Fascist to the core": Former Trump official Milley warns against "dangerous" second term: "Trump appointee Mark Milley called the ex-prez the 'most dangerous person ever.'"

• Dan Froomkin: [10-20] If Trump wins, blame the New York Times: "America's paper of record refuses to sound the alarm about the threat Trump poses to democracy." Sure, the Times endorsed Harris -- see [09-30] The only patriotic choice for president -- but in such jingoistic terms you have to wonder. Their opinion columnists are, as always, artfully divided, but in day-to-day reporting, they do seem awfully dedicated to keeping the race competitive (presumably the ticket to selling more papers) and keeping their options open (as is so often the way of such self-conscious, power-sucking elites). I've never understood how many people actually take "the paper of record" all that seriously. At least I've never been one.

• Hadas Gold/Liam Reilly: [10-16] Fox News did not disclose its all-women town hall with Trump was packed with his supporters.

• Annie Gowen: [10-20] Trump repeats 'enemy from within' comment, targeting Pelosi and Schiff: And there I was, thinking he meant me.

• Evan Halper/Josh Dawsey: [10-18] Trump has vowed to guy climate rules. Oil lobbyists have a plan ready. "As companies fall short on methane emission reductions, a top grade group has crafted a road map for dismantling key Biden administration rules."

• Margaret Hartmann:

  • [10-17] Trump offered Stormy Daniels more hush money . . . this summer?

  • [10-19] Trump too "exhausted" to do interviews with unfriendly outlets: "Is he really too tired, or is he just avoiding the non-sycophantic press?"

• Greg Jaffe: [10-20] The CIA analyst who triggered Trump's first impeachment asks: Was it worth it? Long piece, and at this point probably not worth your time.

• Sarah Jones: [10-15] Donald Trump is deteriorating: "And as he does, the extremists around him move closer to power."

  Though braggadocio is a familiar Trump quality, much like his reluctance to stick to his prepared remarks, he is arguably getting weirder -- and more disturbing -- over time. Trump's speeches are so outlandish, so false, that they often pass without much comment, as the New York Times reported earlier this month in a story about his age. Yet a change is noticeable. "He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought -- some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical," the Times noted, adding that his speeches have become much longer on average, and contain more negative words and examples of profanity than they previously did.

• Hassan Ali Kanu: [10-16] Conservatives use Trump assassination to target women in anti-diversity war: "It's a move to enshrine values into law, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility." What? "The claim is one of reverse discrimination: that the historically and presently male-dominated Secret Service discriminates against men." Say whaaat?

• Nicholas Liu:

  • [10-16] Trump bashes Detroit while addressing wealthy supporters in Detroit: "Speaking before the Detroit Economic Club, Trump said a Harris victory would turn America into Detroit."

  • [10-17] Trump libels Haitians and says January 6 was a "day of love" at Univision town hall.

  • [10-18] Campaign official admits Trump "refusing interviews because he's 'exhausted'": "Trump has cancelled at least 11 campaign events since August even as he accuses Kamala Harris of dodging media." On the other hand, as best I recall, Trump surged in the polls in 2016 after his staff took away his Twitter handle, reducing his exposure. So it's not clear to me that Trump gains much (other than merch sales) from his appearances. Still, "exhausted" may not be the message they want to convey.

• Carlos Lozada: [10-13] When Trump rants, this is what I hear: The author came to the US when he was three, so technically he's an immigrant, a person Trump makes rather gross generalizations about.

• Amanda Marcotte:

  • [10-10] Trump's hurricane of Milton lies: MAGA has a deadly addiction to disinformation.

  • [10-17] Trump's all-female Fox News town hall wasn't for women, but his male base: "Trump called himself 'the father of IVF,' but then admitted he asked Katie Britt to tell him what it is."

• Harold Meyerson: [10-10] Trump's Made-in-China Bibles: "The imperative of Trump's price-gouging (selling $3 Bibles for $59.99) meets the Holy Word."

• Connor O'Keeffe: [10-16] Beware of war hawks in "America First" clothing.

• Heather Digby Parton:

  • [10-11] Donald Trump's campaign stops give away the game: "California and New York are not battleground states so why is the campaign spending time there in the final weeks?" I don't see an answer here, but I also don't like the idea that one should only campaign in "battleground" states. (Not that I mind that both sides take Kansas for granted: this has been a remarkably quiet election here in Wichita, with only two political signs out as I walk the dog around the block -- both, fwiw, Harris/Walz.)

  • [10-16] The MAGA "weave": Donald Trump picks up steam as he dissembles on stage: "Listen to the laughter when Trump insults the Wall St. Journal at a meeting of an Economic Club in any major city. . . . That's not about their wallets. Their wallets are fine. That's about their ids."

  • [10-18] Donald Trump's town hall with Latino voters shows his campaign is clueless: "The Trump campaign is simultaneously courting Latino voters and pushing the Great Replacement theory."

• Russell Payne:

  • [10-18] Trump campaign's coordination with outside groups tests FEC "loopholel": "The FEC paved the way for campaigns to coordinate with outside groups in March -- and big money PACs rushed in."

  • [10-18] Jack Smith drops 2,000 pages of evidence that Trump tried to keep sealed until after the election: "Despite Republican outcry, ex-Trump lawyer says 'the real election interference' would've been delaying its release." The lawyer quoted here is the memorably named Ty Cobb. I'm surprise there's been so little comment on this so far -- this is the first piece I've noted, in closing on Sunday afternoon, although Elie Honig staged a pre-emptory attack on the release two weeks ago: [10-03] Jack Smith's October Surprise. I should search for a couple more:

    • Austin Sarat: [10-03] Jack Smith shows his cards just in time: January 6 case looks like a winning hand against Trump.

• Sabrina Rodriguez/Isaac Arnsdorf: [10-01] Trump mixes up words, swerves among subjects in off-topic speech: "The Republican nominee appeared tired and complained about his heightened campaign schedule."

• Marin Scotten:

  • [10-16] Musk and other billionaires keep Trump afloat, donating over $350 million to MAGA super PACs.

  • [10-16] "Increasingly unstable and unhinged": Trump's "enemy from within" comments worry Democrats.

Vance, and other Republicans:

Harris:

• Ryan Cooper: Black men deserve better pandering from the Harris campaign: "Crypto and weed are not how to advertise her ideas for this group."

• Chas Danner: [10-17] Who won Kamala Harris's Fox News interview with Bret Baier? What does "winning" even mean here? The more salient question is who survived with their reputation intact? This is really just a catalog of reactions, the final of which was "both sides got what they wanted." Which is to say, if you missed it, you didn't miss much.

• David Dayen/Luke Goldstein: Google's guardians donate to the Harris campaign: "Multiple Harris donors at an upcoming fundraiser are representing Google in its case against the Justice Department over monopolizing digital advertising." I have to ask, is digital advertising something we even want to exist? Competition makes most goods more plentiful, more innovative, and more affordable, but if the "good" in question is essentially bad, maybe that shouldn't be the goal. I'm not saying we should protect Google's monopoly. A better solution would be to deflate its profitability. For instance, and this is just off the top of my head, you could levy a substantial tax on digital advertising, collect most of it from Google, and then redistribute much of the income to support websites that won't have to depend on advertising.

• Elie Honig: [11-18] Kamala Harris has finally embraced being a cop: "The label hurt her in 2019. Today she wears it like a badge." Reminds me a bit of when Kerry embraced being a Vietnam War soldier. He didn't get very far with that.

• Robert Kuttner: [10-09] Notes for Harris: "It's good that Kamala Harris is doing more one-on-one interviews, because she's getting a lot better at it. Still, she occasionally misses an opportunity." E.g., "Harris could point out that the administration has made a difference by challenging collusion and price-gouging, in everything from prescription drugs to food wholesalers."

• Nicole Narea: [10-18] How tough would a President Kamala Harris be on immigrants?

• Christian Paz: [10-16] Kamala Harris and the problem with ceding the argument: "The vice president had a chance to defend immigrants on Fox News. She passed."

• Matthew Stevenson: [10-18] Harris: Speed dating Howard Stern: I was surprised last week to find the "shock jock and satellite-radio wit" endorsing Harris last week, probably because I have zero interest or curiosity in him, and may know even less.

Walz, Biden, and other Democrats:

• Avishay Artsy/Sean Rameswaram: [10-21] Why Wisconsin Democrats are campaigning in places where they can't win: "To win statewide, the party wants to "lose by less" in rural areas." That's good advice everywhere. Especially as Democrats actually have a better proposition for rural voters than Republicans have.

• Ed Kilgore: [10-19] Four good reasons Democrats are terrified about the 2024 election: I wasn't sure where to fire this, but the reasons turn out to mostly reside in Democrats' heads. Nothing here suggests that Democrats are more likely to lose. It's just that if they lose, the consequences will be far worse than whatever setbacks Republicans might suffer in another Trump loss:

  1. Democrats remember 2016 and 2020
  2. Democrats fear Trump 2.0 more than Republicans fear Harris
  3. Only one party is threatening to challenge the election results
  4. If Harris wins, she'll oversee a divided government; if Trump wins, he'll have a shot at total power

• Eric Levitz: [10-17] The Democrats' pro-union strategy has been a bust: "Despite Joe Biden's historically pro-union policies, the Democrats' share of the union vote is falling." First question is: is this true? (Actually, either "this": the falling vote share, or the "pro-union" policies.) Second question is would be anti-union (like Republicans) win or lose votes? Most of the people who are locked into Republican positions (e.g., guns, abortion) are so distrustful of Democrats no amount of pandering can move them, but giving up positions that are popular among Democrats can lose face and faith, and that can hurt you more than you can possibly gain, even if there is no meaningful alternative. Third point is who cares? If standing up for unions is the right thing to do, why equivocate with polling? We live in a country where the rich have exorbitant power, where unions are one of the few possible countervailing options. Extreme inequality is corroding everything, from democracy to the fabric of everyday life. More/stronger unions won't fix that, but they'll help, and that's good in itself, as well as something that resonates with other promising strategies. Fourth, if you're just polling union members, you're missing out on workers who would like to join a union if only they could. Are your "pro-union" policies losing them? Or are they offering hope, and a practical path to a better life?

  On some level, Democrats and Republicans are fated to be polarized opposites, each defined by the other and stuck in its identity. A couple more pieces on labor and politics this year:

  • Sharon Block/Benjamin Sachs: [10-16] The truth about the parties and labor: "You need only look at the state level to understand who supports workers and who doesn't."

  • Steven Greenhouse: [10-15] Sean O'Brien's tantrum against the Democrats: "He appears to be hoping for a Trump victory, which would be a disaster for the Teamsters, but just maybe good for him."

• Erik Loomis: [09-26] Preserving public lands: "Deb Haaland has been a remarkable secretary of the interior. But the future is about funding in Congress."

Supreme Court, legal matters, and other crimes:

• Madiba K Dennie: [10-21] Republican Attorneys General to Court: We demand more pregnant teens: "The conservative effort to ban abortion marches on, and with some deeply unsettling legal claims."

• Hassan Ali Kanu: [10-15] America's judicial divisions: "Every major policy issue is now also a courtroom battle, decided in increasingly partisan settings. And there's no end in sight." This is a good overview of an effect Millhiser has been writing about case-by-case for years: right-wing plaintiffs and Red State attorneys general shopping for favorable judges willing to impose horrific rulings on the rest of the nation. Kacsmaryk's mifepristone ruling is just one glaring case example.

• Ian Millhiser:

  • [10-16] The nightmare facing Democrats, even if Harris wins: "If Harris wins, the Republican Party will almost certainly be able to veto anything she does, thanks to our broken Constitution." She'll also have to contend with thousands of lobbyists, including many with hooks deep into her own party -- and given her billion dollar campaign warchest, most likely into her as well -- as the Constitution isn't the only thing broken in American politics.

  • [10-17] The strange case that the Supreme Court keeps refusing to decide: "A mysterious Supreme Court case could change everything about criminal punishment."

  • [10-18] The entire Texas government is fighting over whether to save a man's life: "Robert Roberson was sentenced to die on a theory that's now widely viewed with skepticism by medical experts."

• Shaun Richman: [10-22] The right believes it has the Supreme Court votes to overturn labor law.

Climate and environment:

• Alex Abad-Santos: [10-11] For some evacuation defiers, Hurricane Milton is a social media goldmine: "They didn't listen to Hurricane Milton evacuation orders. Then they posted through it." This reminds me of the hype that "shock and awe" would win the war against Iraq, because all it would take is one awesome demonstration of force to get Iraqis to drop their arms and surrender. Problem was: the people who were truly shocked were dead, and the rest survived not just the bombs but the hype, making them think they were invincible.

• Matthew Cappucci/Kelsey Baker: [10-19] Hurricane Oscar forms in Caribbean, surprising storm watchers: "Oscar probably won't be around long. After making a run at Cuba, it will begin turning north into Monday and weakening into Tuesday."

• Benji Jones: [10-17] We need $700 billion to save nature: "Just a tiny fraction of the global GDP could help stave off ecological collapse."

• Robert Kuttner: [10-15] How hurricanes are a profit center for insurers: "To compensate for exaggerated expectations of claims, they jack up rates and hollow our coverage, giving themselves more profit than before." As long as the market will bear it, and up to the point when they really do go bankrupt. This is, of course, the kind of profiteering business schools teach their students to be shameless about.

Business, labor, and Economists:

• Dean Baker: Quite a bit to catch up with here, as he always has good points to make. In trying to figure out how far I needed to go back, I ran across this tweet I had noted: "Part of the job of a progressive government is to shift the public narrative towards the idea that the state can improve people's lives." I'll add that the point here is not to convince you that government is good or benign, but that it belongs to you and everyone else, and can be used to serve your interests, as far as they align with most other people (or, as the US Constitution put it, to "promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity"). While progressives initially do this by advancing reasoned argument, they also need to put it into practice whenever possible, and actually do things to "promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty." You hear much about "democracy" these days, but knows this: democracy makes good government possible, but only works if/when people realize they have the power to direct it. Also, make sure to check out Baker's free book, Rigged.

  • [09-16] Now that we all agree that 10 percent tariffs on imports are bad, how about 1000 percent tariffs on prescription drugs?

  • [09-17] The Washington Post is concerned about the budget deficit, again.

  • [09-22] Why is it silly to think it's the media's job to inform the public?

  • [09-23] My six favorite untruths about the Biden-Harris economy. These are the subheds:

    1. The New York Times picks an atypical worker to tell a story about a divided economy.
    2. It's hard for recent college grads to find jobs even when their unemployment rate is near a twenty-year low.
    3. The two-full time job measure of economic hardship
    4. The retirement crisis
    5. The collapsing saving rate
    6. Young people will never be able to afford a home

    He adds:

    Those are my six favorites, but I could come up with endless more pieces, like the CNN story on the family that drank massive amounts of milk who suffered horribly when milk prices rose, or the New York Times piece on a guy who used an incredible amount of gas and was being bankrupted by the record gas prices following the economy's reopening.

    There are also the stories that the media chose to ignore, like the record pace of new business starts, the people getting big pay increases in low-paying jobs, the record level of job satisfaction, the enormous savings in commuting costs and travel time for the additional 19 million people working from home (almost one eight of the workforce).

    The media decided that they wanted to tell a bad economy story, and they were not going to let reality get in the way.

  • [09-26] The economy after the GDP revisions: "Basically, they tell us a story of an economy that has performed substantially better since the pandemic than we had previously believed."

    The highlights are:

    • An economy that grew substantially more rapidly than previously believed and far faster than other wealthy countries
    • Substantially more rapid productivity growth, suggesting more rapid gains in wages and living standards and a smaller burden of the national debt;
    • Higher income growth than previously reported, with both more wages and more profits;
    • A higher saving rate, meaning that the stories about people having to spend down their savings were nonsense.

    There were also a couple of not-so-good items:

    • A higher profit share that is still near a post-pandemic peak;
    • A lower implicit corporate tax rate, although still well above the 2019 level.

  • [10-05] Automation is called "productivity growth". As he points out, productivity growth was long regarded as a universal good thing, until the 1980s, when businesses found they could keep all of the profits, instead of sharing with workers.

    Anyhow, this is a big topic (see Rigged, it's free), but the idea that productivity growth would ever be the enemy is a bizarre one. Automation and other technologies with labor displacing potential are hardly new and there is zero reason for workers as a group to fear them, even though they may put specific jobs at risk.

    The key issue is to structure the market to ensure that the benefits are broadly shared. We never have to worry about running out of jobs. We can always have people work shorter hours or just have the government send out checks to increase demand. It is unfortunate that many have sought to cultivate this phony fear.

  • [10-08] Tariffs and government-granted patent monopolies: bad and "good" forms of protectionism. Baker rarely misses an opportunity to bash patent monopolies -- an important issue that few others pay much attention to.

  • [10-09] Should Kamala Harris be celebrating the labor market? A sober evaluation of a recent column by Peter Coy: [10-07] Kamala Harris should think twice about touting this economy.

    I will say that by any historical standard the labor market is doing pretty damn good. It could be better, but a low unemployment rate and rapidly rising real wages is a better story than any incumbent administration could tell since -- 2000, oh well.

    I would put more stress here on "it could be better" than on the seemingly self-satisfied "pretty damn good." I'd also stress the options: that Republicans and business lobbyists have obstructed reforms that would help more (and in some cases virtually all) people, and that the key to better results is electing more Democrats -- who may still be too generous to the rich, but at least consider everyone else.

  • [10-14] CNN tells Harris not to talk about the economy. CNN is not the only "neutral news outlet" to have persistently trashed the economic success of the Biden-Harris administration, but they have been particularly egregious. It's almost as if they have their own agenda.

    The goal for Democrats in pushing their many economic successes (rapid job creation, extraordinarily low unemployment, real wage growth, especially at the lower end of the wage distribution, a record boom in factory construction) is to convince a small percentage of the electorate that this is a record to build on. By contrast, Donald Trump seems to push out a new whacked out proposal every day, with the only constants being a massive tax on imports and deporting a large portion of the workforce in agriculture and construction.

    Given the track record of the Biden-Harris administration compared with the craziness being pushed by Donald Trump, it is understandable that backers of Donald Trump would not want Harris to talk about the economy. But why would a neutral news outlet hold that view?

• Emma Curchin: [10-17] 34 million seniors in Medicare advantage plans face rude awakening: "Insurers are dropping plans and slashing benefits" -- you know, like all private insurance companies everywhere.

• Sarah Jones: [Fall 2024] In the shadow of King Coal: "While the coal industry is in terminal decline, it still shapes the culture of central Appalachia."

• Paul Krugman: [10-17] How Trump's radical tariff plan could wreck our economy.

• Robert Kuttner: [10-18] Redeeming the Nobel in economics: "This year's prize went to three institutionalist critics of neoliberalism. The award is overdue." Daren Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A Robinson. The latter two were co-authors with Acemoglu of books like Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012), and Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (2023). Johnson was also co-author, with James Kwak, of one of the first notable books to come out of the 2008 financial meltdown: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010).

• Bethany McLean: [10-17] Senate report: How private equity 'gutted' dozens of US hospitals: Thanks to modern tricks of financial engineering, investors can prosper even when the underlying business is failing."

Ukraine and Russia:

• Aaron Sobczak: [10-17] Diplomacy Watch: Imminent Ukraine invitation to NATO unlikely: "Zelenskyy's 'victory plan' receiving cool reception so far."

Elsewhere in the world and/or/in spite of America's empire:

• Philip Balboni: [10-14] Why US foreign policy today is a form of 'isolationism': "Those throwing around the epithet are the ones driving us to be more alone in the world."

• Van Jackson: I just ran across him today, but he has several books I should have noticed by now, and a Substack newsletter that I'll cite below. He describes himself as "a one-time 'defense intellectual' and a longtime creature of the national security state," but also "on the left," albeit only in a "vague cosmopolitanism and an antiwar sensibility, yet reflexively in support of the going concerns of the Democratic Partly, including (paradoxically) military primacy."

  • [10-19] Me, Dan Drezner, and the fate of the world: "I think foreign policy will tip the presidential election. Drezner thinks not. Everything hangs in the balance."

Other stories:

• Joshua Frank: [10-18] Pissing everyone off for 30 damn years: A memoir of writing for Counterpunch since 1998, tied on the publication's 30th anniversary to their annual funding campaign.

• Whizy Kim: [10-16] Is every car dealer trying to rip me off? "Why buying a car is the worst kind of shopping." Cited here because after 18 years I'm in the market for a new car, and because I've been for 2-3 years without ever managing to put the time and effort into it. I've only bought one used and four new cars in my life, and the new car I spent the least time shopping for was by far the worst -- the others were pretty good deals on pretty good cars. But I've seen a lot of crap like this, and it pays to beware.

Obituaries

• Kris Kristofferson:

  • Larry Long: [10-17] Remembering Kris Kristofferson: 1936-2024.

• Liam Payne: Former member of UK boy band One Direction, dead at 31.

  • Kyndall Cunningham/Aja Romano: [10-17] The chaos, conspiracy theories, and controversy surrounding Liam Payne's death: "Everything we (actually) know about Liam Payne's death."

Books

• Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Message

  • Sean Illing: [10-15] Ta-Nehisi Coates on complexity, clarity, and truth: "What the author saw in Palestine." Interview.

  • Rann Miller: [10-07] One year after October 7: A return to forever: "Ta-Nehisi Coates seeks to return America to moral clarity."

  • James North: [10-14] Critics charge Ta-Nehisi Coates didn't spend enough time in Palestine to learn the truth. They're wrong. "Pro-Israel critics are panicking at the success of Ta-Nehisi Coates's new book, The Message, and they have honed in on an argument to discredit him that doesn't hold up to the slightest scrutiny."

• Bob Woodward: War.

  • Fred Kaplan: [10-15] Bob Woodward's latest book tells the story of America's declining leverage in the world. Link title was "Bob Woodward's new book is about Biden, but the most urgent takeaways are about Trump." This is just more proof of the truly ridiculous extent to which Trump has dominated our minds since 2015. Nearly four years out of office, it still feels like he's the incumbent, to no small extent because most of our regrets and great fears of the moment are directly traceable back to him, but because of his amazing (and I'll use the word "ridiculous" again here) domination of the noosphere (apologies for using a word almost everyone will have to look up, so I can at least save you that trouble: per Merriam-Webster: "the sphere of human consciousness and mental activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere and in relation to evolution"). In short, he's in our heads, as intractable as an earworm, and several orders of magnitude more disturbing. I've been struggling with trying to narrow down "the top ten reasons for voting for Harris against Trump," but number one has to be: MAKE IT STOP!

    Returning to the book, Kaplan writes a bit about Biden:

    Woodward's style of storytelling is more episodic than structural. Chapters tend to run for just a few pages. His mantra tends to be "And then . . . and then . . . and then . . . " as opposed to "And so . . . and so . . . and so . . ." Still, the stories here hang together, more than they usually do, because of their underlying thread -- as the title suggests, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and how Biden and his team dealt with them.

    For the most part, Woodward is impressed, concluding that they engaged in "genuine good faith efforts" to "wield the levers of executive power responsibly and in the national interest," adding, "I believe President Biden and this team will be largely studied in history as an example of steady and purposeful leadership."

    Needless to say at this point, I disagree with nearly everything that Biden has done in the foreign policy arena, but Woodward's wording here -- "good faith efforts," "steady and purposeful leadership" -- betrays the subtext, where the baseline for praise is "at least he's not Trump." So I can get the point, without having to agree with the particulars. Kaplan continues:

    This is an uncharacteristically bold assertion for any author, much less Woodward, who, throughout his 50-year career, has been the less judgmental half of the Woodward and Bernstein team that broke the Watergate scandal and brought down Richard Nixon. In a Playboy interview back in 1989, he admitted that analysis wasn't his strong point; it still isn't. But heading into his ninth decade, with nearly two dozen books under his belt, it seems he feels entitled -- properly so -- to render some verdicts from journalism's high bench.

    He dangled his new assertiveness in 2020, on the eve of that year's election, when he wrote, as the last line in Rage, "Donald Trump is the wrong man for the job." The next year, after Trump's defeat, he ended Peril by musing, "What is your country? What has it become under Trump?"

    And even in War, where Trump plays a cameo role as he mulls making another run for the White House, Woodward declares, just before touting Biden's legacy, "Donald Trump is not only the wrong man for the presidency, he is unfit to lead the country."

Music (and other arts?)

• The Paranoid Style: [10-13] "And if I start to cry, you come down from the sky on your wings": "A tribute to Nicky Hopkins."

• Ellen Wulfhorst/Katrina Sirotta: [10-17] The best album of the century so far, according to critics. Plus, see the rest of the top 50. Turns out this is compiled from Metacritic data, so you could say "according to algorithms," as no critic actually thinks this.

• Steve Lacy Memorial Scrapbook: A new website dedicated to the late soprano saxophone great.

Chatter

• Meme quote from Michelle Wolf: "You know in High School if you didn't believe in Science or History, it was just called failing." I got this from a Facebook thread, with several interesting comments, including this one from Clifford Ocheltree:

  I shall only point to an earlier remark, the failure of our educational system to teach critical thinking. To be skeptical in the absence of that learned skill is pure ignorance. I would add that perception plays a critical role in how an uneducated populace becomes 'skeptical,' 'credulous' and 'easily duped.' We are, we have become, the product of a failed educational system. One in which the vast majority of the population cannot read directions on a bottle of aspirin or name the three branches of the Federal Government. These failures allow both parties to play fast and loose with history and science knowing full well the audience isn't likely to 'get it.'

  Ocheltree also addressed history: "History is the interpretation of fact by 'experts' who bring their own bias." Someone else picked this up, noting "I can't help laugh at the notion of your feigning disdain for history" then asking "why do you lap up so many history books?" Ocheltree replied:

  Fact and history are not the same thing. Most 'experts' (historians) have a bias and view 'facts' through that lens. Nearly 50 years ago I read an excellent book by Frances Fitzgerald, "America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century" (1979). A discussion and analysis of how history teaching and texts had changed over the years. At times the result of new information coming to light and at others the outgrowth of changing social standards or political leanings. Some 20 years ago I discovered some 'facts' while researching. Trial testimony with supporting documentation (original records) in a Virginia court house basement. At a conference I had some time to speak with the author of the leading text(s) being used on the topic by any number of colleges. I shared my findings, privately, as they disproved a good chunk of his work. His response in short? Nobody will give a shit that I was wrong, my text is the accepted standard and will always be paramount because it makes my point.

  I would add, history and record reviews are much the same. The author collects 'facts,' the critic listens. Each applies his/her own bias. The idea that anyone would accept an authors' work(s) as 'unbiased' strikes me as a failure of our education system. Steven Pinker's recent work has focused on the utter lack of training students in the basics of critical thinking. I 'lap up' history books with a jaundiced eye. I love the topic but learned many years ago, just because a book has been issued isn't 'proof' that it is accurate.

  Hardin Smith, who started this thread, added:

  Who said fact and history are the same thing? I sure didn't. But that doesn't mean it's not worth studying and it doesn't mean that it doesn't behoove people to have a working knowledge of it. And certainly you'd agree that there are certain things that we can all agree on, or at least on the general outlines. Here's a question: if so much of what you read is biased, whose work are you using to make that judgment? Is there a higher unbiased source you go to? And, are there certain historical events that we can all agree to? The Holocaust, the Moon Landing, Trump's loss in '20? Or is everything in your world subjective opinion? Also, history is not like record reviews, sorry. Record reviews are totally based on opinion, but though there may be bias, history at least concerns itself with actual facts. It's a subjective interpretation of actual facts. There's never completely removing bias in anything produced by humans, but I'd submit to you that some are more biased than others. Some are relatively free of bias. None of it means that history isn't worth knowing.

  It's tempting to go all philosophical here, and argue that it's all biased, all subjective, at best assertions that are subject to independent verification -- same for record reviews, although the odds of being rejected by other subjectives there are much elevated compared to science, which has a longer history of refinement and consensus building (not that similar processes don't apply to record reviewing). Still, not much disagreement here. Smith seems to find it important to maintain a conceptual division between opinion and fact, between subjective and objective, which I find untenable and not even necessary (although it's easy to fall into when arguing with idiots -- which is why Wolf's joke is so cutting).

  This leads us back to the importance of critical thinking, which is ultimately a process of understanding one's own biases -- starting, of course, with exposing the biases of others. (Much like crazy people developed psychoanalysis to understand, and ultimately to master, their own neuroses.)

• Ali Abunimah: [10-21] In April, under pressure from "Israel," @amazon banned the sale of The Thorn and the Carnation, the novel by Palestinian resistance leader Yahya Sinwar.

  You can still buy copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf from Amazon, in multiple languages.

  [Link to: Amazon pulls book by Hamas leader Sinwar. By the way, you can also still buy copies of Herzl's The Jewish State, in many editions, as well as his utopian novel, Altneuland (The Old New-Land) -- you know, the one about how happy Arabs will be once Jews are running the state.]

Local tags (these can be linked to directly): music.

Original count: 212 links, 12063 words (15688 total)

Current count: 224 links, 13319 words (17265 total)

Daily Log

I posted this on Facebook:

Several updates of note. Birthday coming up next week, so I've been thinking about another kaleidoscopic dinner feast. We haven't had many of late, which has more to do with my isolation than with the 80 lbs. I've dropped over the last year. (The weight has always had more to do with junk food comforts than with my more ambitious cooking -- not that I didn't get a bump last birthday [2 lbs] or when my brother visited a few weeks back [3 lbs].) But cooking seems to be one of the few things I still have reasonable skills for, so I could benefit from the exercise. But what was the question I've been mulling over. Early on, I explored other-world cuisines -- started with Chinese, Indian, Turkish -- then wandered all around (Spanish, Greek, Thai, Moroccan, Hungarian, Mexican, Korean, Russian, Cuban) before finally tackling French a few years ago, but lately I've mostly been doing trad American fare (one was classic fried chicken, another was just burgers on homemade buns). I've never done a proper Italian, but I've done enough there that the element of discovery is past; also I despair of finding the veal I crave, and I've never got the hang of making my own pasta. One idea was to just pick a book from my shelf that I've never really used, and see what I can make of it. Duguid's "Burma" jumped out at me. I bought it in 2012, after my only experience with a Burmese restaurant (in NYC, actually just take-out): I got an extraordinary mango pickle curry, but it turned out that my purchase didn't provide the recipe, so I let the book languish. I presented this (and several other ideas) to Laura. She endorsed Burma, so that's what we'll be doing. I've ordered a second Burmese cookbook for the occasion ("Burmese Superstar") which does have the recipe, and another on Indonesia ("Cradle of Flavor") for good measure. (Maybe Indonesian, which I've dabbled in, will be next -- I've long dreamed of duplicating the amazing rijsttafel spread we've enjoyed several times.) But before I can cook I still need to wrap up the upstairs bedroom/closet project. I'm finally ready to start painting the room today, and also to start putting the paneling up in the closet. So I'm hoping to see some rapid progress, after several miserable weeks of patching plaster and sanding. More on that later.

I originally wrote "social atrophy" where you now see "my isolation." Edit was after Laura objected about me complaining that "we have no friends." Of course, we do still have friends, some very dear, but that's mostly due to Laura's efforts, which certainly I benefit from, and I fear contribute little to, other than the occasional dinner. Looking back through my Facebook record, which isn't complete but hits the high points, I noted the following dinners, starting with last birthday:

1. October 27, 2023: Birthday dinner, Spanish-themed, mariscada in green sauce.
2. November 3, 2023: Post-birthday leftovers, including a couple new dishes that had been cut from the original.
3. April 4: Steve visit, mostly Ottolenghi.
4. June 4: Chinese: ants climbing tree.
5. June 9: Chicken marbella, mostly Italian sides.
6. July 3: Indian: butter chicken, cabbage, eggplant, potatoes, raita.
7. August 19: Jambalaya.
8. September 7: Clearance special tapas.
9. September 24: Another clearance special, mostly Greek (shrimp with feta) and Italian.
10. October 7: Steve visit, comfort food.

So, ten dinners in the past year, although the big gap was last winter, November to April, and the pace has picked up of late, especially with the "inventory reduction" concept. So the first half of the year may have had something to do with the diet. Attendance was usually 4-6, although we had more for last birthday (10 is about our practical limit). Once in a while, I cook for just the two of us, but those times didn't get registered. Also possible that there were a couple more occasions without photos (two of the above were "leftover" plates), but nothing major.

I finally added this comment:

I went through my Facebook posts and counted out 10 dinners starting from last year's birthday, which was mostly Spanish, starting with the mariscada in green sauce, and counting a leftover tapas dinner a week later. After that, there is a gap until Steven Hull came to visit in April, with the pace picking up recently due to my "inventory reduction" campaign. All, by the way, were well-attended, and everyone seemed to leave pleased.

Daily Log

Finally making what feels like progress on the upstairs bedroom and closet project. Last night, I finished masking around the trim and baseboards, so I'm almost ready to paint primer. The "almost" is because I left a couple of rough spots for further sanding, and added a bit of spackle that will also need a brief sand. I've been unhappy with my random orbital sander, which no longer reliably holds the hook-and-loop discs. I ordered a new pad from Amazon, and I'm waiting on delivery today. But mostly I've been getting by with hand sanding. I figure there's less than an hour of prep work. I haven't masked the ceiling off, as it's new, and the guy who put it up and painted it primed the walls down a few inches, so I should just blend into his work. Not sure whether I'll mask the ceiling off for the finish paint, or just use an edge guide. In any case, we still have to buy wall and trim paint.

Also did most of my sanding in the closet. As I write this, I still need to make one pass around the bottom walls, and take a look for anything else. Lots of things are still rather ugly there, but it won't show through paneling like it would with paint. I'm also reconciled to the walls being curved. They just have to be flat enough for the panels to stick. Also, only one wall has an edge to match, plus one piece of ceiling. I'm going to add 1x2 trim boards to cover up the seams, so I have a lot of leeway to work with. Only possible problem is that I have a 50-inch wall, which I could center a 48-inch panel on (trimming both ends), or offset and cut a thin strip for filler (which would be covered by trim).

Biggest problem will be maneuvering the panels into place, especially the big ones. All have to be contorted to get through the door. One has to be slid behind some existing wires (previously in a piece of blue plastic conduit, which I've ripped out, giving me some maneuver room, but I'm not sure it's enough. In that one case, I'll probably have to glue the wall instead of the board. One idea I have is to press the glue down then secure the edges with screws in drilled holes (we're going into plaster on lath). Once the glue is set, I can remove the screws, add the trim boards (which will cover the holes), and screw them on securely. The trim boards will not only secure the paneling, but will give me a frame for adding shelves, drawers, etc.

I'm sitting the panels on top of the baseboards, so I'm not really doing anything to the latter. (Repainting them will be a later option.) I'll caulk around the bottom edges, and/or cover the edges up with molding. I'm going to need to do something like that around the big bookcase, which stops two inches below the ceiling. It wasn't a problem before, but looks bad now.

Saw this link: The best album of the century so far, according to critics. Plus, see the rest of the top 50. "Story by Ellen Wulfhorst, Katrina Sirotta." Critics? Ranking is derived from Metacritic's metascores, so would be more accurate to say "according to algorithms." Labels mostly came from picture credits, but I've corrected a few. I'm not feeling a huge urge to bracket my grades, as I often do. Probably a dozen albums I haven't heard yet.

Still, good enough for a checklist:

1. Wadada Leo Smith: Ten Freedom Summers (2012, Cuneiform)
2. Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020, Epic)
3. Muncie Girls: From Caplan to Belsize (2016, Specialist Subject)
4. Brian Wilson: Smile (2004, Nonesuch)
5. Loretta Lynn: Van Lear Rose (2004, Interscope)
6. The Wonder Years: The Greatest Generation (2013, Hopeless)
7. Kendrick Lamar: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015, Top Dawg/Aftermath)
8. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Ghosteen (2019, Bad Seed)
9. David Lang: The Little Match Girl Passion (2009, Harmonia Mundi)
10. Machine Head: Bloodstone & Diamonds (2014, Nuclear Blast)
11. Amaarae: Fountain Baby (2023, Interscope)
12. Cindy Lee: Diamond Jubilee (2024, self-released)
13. OutKast: Stankonia (2000, LaFace)
14. Kendrick Lamar: Damn. (2017, Top Dawg/Aftermath)
15. Bob Dylan: Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020, Columbia)
16. D'Angelo: Black Messiah (2014, RCA)
17. Joyce Manor: Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (2012, Asian Man)
18. Jamie Branch: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (World War) (2023, International Anthem)
19. Rose City Band: Summerlong (Thrill Jockey)
20. Serve: Eternal Forward Motion (2019, Spinefarm)
21. Berwyn: Who Am I (2024, Columbia)
22. Doe: Some Things Last Longer Than You (2016, Specialist Subject)
23. Ghetts: Conflict of Interest (2021, Warner Bros. UK)
24. Charles Lloyd: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (2024, Blue Note)
25. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Skeleton Tree (2016, Bad Seed)
26. Charli XCX: Brat (2024, Atlantic)
27. Ali Farka Toure: Savane (2006, World Circuit)
28. Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010, Roc A Fella)
29. The Chariot: One Wing (2012, Entertainment One)
30. Lankum: The Livelong Day (2019, Rough Trade)
31. Rosalia: Motomami (2022, Columbia)
32. Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want to Turn Into You (Perpetual Notice)
33. Madvillain: Madvillainy (2004, Stones Throw)
34. Sault: Untitled (Rise) (2020, Forever Living Originals)
35. Mount Eerie: A Crow Looked at Me (2017, Bridge)
36. Noname: Room 25 (2018, Noname)
37. Bob Dylan: Love and Theft (2001, Columbia)
38. Billy Strings: Renewal (2021, Rounder)
39. Allison Russell: The Returner (2023, Fantasy)
40. Saba: Care for Me (2018, Saba Pivot)
41. The Menzingers: On the Impossible Past (2012, Epitaph)
42. Dave Stapleton: Flight (2012, Edition)
43. Marius Neset: Golden Xplosion (2011, Edition)
44. Nova Twins: Supernova (2022, Marshall)
45. Self Esteem: Prioritise Pleasure (2021, Fiction)
46. Beyoncé: Lemonade (2016, Columbia)
47. Black Country, New Road: Ants From Up There (2022, Ninja Tune)
48. Ry Cooder: Pull Up Some Dust and Sit (2011, Nonesuch)
49. Deafheaven: Sunbather (2013, Deathwish)
50. N.E.R.D.: In Search Of . . . (2001, Virgin)

Daily Log

William Boyd asked "How often do you update Xgau's website?" I answered:

There are two pieces to the website, therefore two answers. There are a bunch of flat files, hand-coded in PHP (a scripting language for web pages, so mostly HTML and CSS, plus a few functions for common things, like page layout, headers, and footers). I update those files whenever I add a new notice to the news and RSS rolls, usually 8-24 hours after Christgau posts something on Substack, sometimes (if I'm really distracted) up to 3 days. The Substack files are included in the update, but have time locks -- 9 months for CG files, 30 days for everything else, but since the files are always there, the locks will open on schedule. But there is also a MySQL database, which has all of the consumer guide reviews and their indexing, a table of (almost) all of the flat files, and cross-referencing links between them. I update this much less frequently, and at the moment this database is pretty old. I've been maintaining my local copy, which at the moment lacks the October CG and maybe 6-9 months of page links and cross references. A few weeks ago, I was thinking I was real close to doing an update, but then I got swamped in other work. It shouldn't be much longer, but I'm still very much swamped. The database update is much trickier than the flat files, and because I do it much less often, I have to consult notes to make sure I'm doing all the right things in just the right order, so I need to find a couple hours where I'm clear-headed enough to do things like that. I'll also note that Christgau almost never complains about my chronic tardiness, and therefore inadvertently encourages it. I do much better responding to pressure/events than self-directing (where this is one of dozens of things I seemingly never get to). For instance, I took the time to respond here, because you asked. I usually make corrections to the website within a day or two after being asked -- although it may, as you've seen, take months before the website piece gets updated. (Actually, sometimes I do go ahead and patch the database without doing a full update. Depends on how simple the change is.)

I also added this:

By the way, I have an email list for technical discussions about my websites (mostly Christgau's, but also occasionally about my other ones). I've been using it very infrequently when I have something more techy that I want to explain and/or elicit some commentary on, but if you'd like to lurk, or maybe even comment, send me email (don't reply here; if you can't find my email you're unlikely to be of much help), and we'll discuss it further. I've long had plans for a fairly major revision of the website, which right now seems unlikely anytime soon, but it was originally written in HTML 3.1 (with whatever CSS was then current; HTML seems to have stabilized at 5, with DOM and much-changed CSS), PHP 3 (now 8), MySQL 3 (now 8), using ISO-8859-1 (now should be UTF-8), with no Javascript (which I still regard as yucky but supposedly has its uses), no cookies, no lots of other things. Lots of things have been patched to keep it working, and new pages are all HTML 5 compliant, but the foundations need rethinking, even if the basic model and design seems sound. In the meantime, I may use the mail list for some discussions of a possible Francis Davis site, although if that develops it will probably merit its own list.

Rather bizarrely, Facebook converted "8" (as in "PHP 8") to a happy-face emoji, so I had to edit the text. It now occurs to me that the conversion was for "8)," which I broke up by changing it to "8.?)." Had I realized that at the time, I could have just put a space after the "8" and made it look like a dumb typo. I wouldn't say I'm emojiphobic, but I've never integrated emojis into my thinking, let alone my vocabulary.

Music Week

Expanded blog post, October archive (in progress).

Tweet: Music Week: 24 albums, 5 A-list

Music: Current count 43039 [43015] rated (+24), 41 [42] unrated (-1).

New records reviewed this week:

• Jessica Ackerley: All of the Colours Are Singing (2022 [2024], AKP): [sp]: B+(*)
• Adekunle Gold: Tequila Ever After (2023, Def Jam): [sp]: B+(**)
• Bad Moves: Wearing Out the Refrain (2024, Don Giovanni): [sp]: B+(***)
• John Chin/Jeong Lim Yang/Jon Gruk Kim: Journey of Han (2024, Jinsy Music): [sp]: B+(*)
• Guy Davis: The Legend of Sugarbelly (2024, M.C.): [sp]: B+(***)
• The Kris Davis Trio: Run the Gauntlet (2024, Pyroclastic): [cd]: B+(***)
• Wendy Eisenberg: Viewfinder (2022-23 [2024], American Dreams): [sp]: B+(**)
• Frode Gjerstad Trio: Unknown Purposes (2023 [2024], Circulasione Totale): [bc]: B+(***)
• Frode Gjerstad/Margaux Oswald/Ivar Myrset Asheim: Another Step (2024, Circulasione Totale): [bc]: B+(*)
• Joel and the Neverending Sextet: Marbled (2023 [2024], Motvind): [sp]: B+(***)
• Ka: The Thief Next to Jesus (2024, Iron Works): [sp]: B+(**)
• Omer Leshem: Play Space (2024, Ubuntu Music): [cd]: B+(**)
• Terence McManus: Music for Chamber Trio (2024, Rowhouse Music): [cd]: B+(***)
• Kate Pierson: Radios & Rainbows (2024, Lazy Meadow Music): [sp]: B+(**)
• Dafnis Prieto Sí o Sï Quartet: 3 Sides of the Coin (2024, Dafnison Music): [cd]: A-
• Dave Rempis/Jason Adasiewicz/Joshua Abrams/Tyler Damon: Propulsion (2023 [2024], Aerophonic): [cd]: A-
• Dred Scott/Moses Patrou/Tom Beckham/Matt Pavolka: Cali Mambo (2023 [2024], Ropeadope): [cd]: B+(**)
• M Slago/Homeboy Sandman: And We Are Here (2024, Fly 7 Music): [sp]: B+(***)
• Walter Smith III: Three of Us Are From Houston and Reuben Is Not (2024, Blue Note): [sp]: A-
• Sulida: Utos (2023 [2024], Clean Feed): [sp]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

• Kampire Presents: A Dancefloor in Ndola ([2024], Strut): [sp]: A-
• Miami Sound: Rare Funk & Soul From Miami, Florida 1967-1974 (1967-74 [2023], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(**)
• Miami Sound: More Funk & Soul From Miami, Florida 1967-1974 (1967-74 [2024], Soul Jazz): [r]: B+(**)

Old music:

• Ka: Languish Arts (2022, Iron Works): [sp]: B+(**)
• Ka: Woeful Studies (2022, Iron Works): [sp]: B+(***)
• Don Walser: Rolling Stone From Texas (1994, Watermelon): [sp]: A-
• Don Walser: Texas Top Hand (1996, Watermelon): [sp]: B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Caleb Wheeler Curtis: The True Story of Bears and the Invention of the Battery (Imani, 2CD) [11-01]
• Andy Haas: For the Time, Being (Resonant Music) []
• Shawneci Icecold/Vernon Reid/Matthew Garrison & Grant Calvin Weston: Future Prime (Underground45) [09-01]
• Laird Jackson: Life (self-released) []
• Pony Boy All-Star Big Band: This Is Now: Live at Boxley's (Pony Boy) [08-09]